A Year in Self Publishing

A Year of Self Publishing

Those of you who know me well will know that I’ve been writing since forever, but it was only one year ago, January 24^th, 2012, that I self-published for the first time.

I’ve been traditionally published before to a certain extent – two short stories in professional magazines and more than 20 times in the small presses. In total, I’ve sold 33 short stories, however a lot of those sales were to magazines that bit the bucket before my story (and my pay check) ever saw print.

  

I won’t go too much into my reasons for deciding to self-publish, but it was mostly an attempt to save myself as a writer. I’d written what I thought was a seriously top drawer book (Tube Riders) and seen it rejected time and again by publishers and agents (it actually got three partial requests, but that was about it). My confidence in being able to sell was at such a low ebb I was close to quitting. I hadn’t written anything meaningful in more than two years and I’d been wasting my time doing all sorts of random things which weren’t writing fiction, generally throwing away whatever shred of talent I had.

Self-publishing was something I felt I had to try. I wanted people to read my books, had confidence in my writing skills and my stories, and saw it as an opportunity rather than a last chance saloon.

This is what happened.

On 24^th January 2012 I uploaded a previously published short story, Forever My Baby, to Amazon, followed a few days later by another short story, The Ageless.

By the end of January I had made four sales – two to myself, one to my dad and one to a mate.

In February I added three more previously published short stories and a collection of ten, Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories. By the end of the month I had sold 22 total copies, mostly to friends and family, and made about $20.

So it continued. In March I published my novel The Tube Riders, followed by another novel, The Man Who Built the World, in September. I added several more short stories, the first two episodes of a novella series, and I split Tube Riders into three parts, primarily as a marketing tool.

By the end of the year I had 21 items for sale on Amazon.

My sales ticked over very slowly without really kicking off. Still, by the end of the year I had sold 415 books and had make a fraction under $700.

Ebook sales totals by month

(all Amazon stores combined)

Jan – 4

Feb – 22

Mar – 15

Apr – 13

May – 6

Jun – 32

Jul – 30

Aug – 27

Sept – 20

Oct – 72

Nov – 33

Dec – 113

Paperbacks (Sept to Dec) - 18

Total – 415

Revenue - $699.66

October’s spike was the first time I offered Tube Riders as a Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select free promotion, and in December I did another one. While I’m not a fan of giving books away for free, I am very serious about making this into a career and in the early days it is important to get as many readers as possible. Hopefully in the future I will be able to move away from KDP Select into other distributors and more traditional forms of advertising beyond the free promotions that Select allows. However, so far it has helped me a lot, although for those sales I have given away roughly 16,000 free books through promotions. It is quite some figure, but considering there are probably more than 10 million people with Kindles alone it’s a drop in the ocean, and it allowed me to reach readers that would otherwise have not found my work. It’s a form of advertising, and costs me nothing, whereas billboards or newspaper ads would cost a small fortune I don’t have. So far it’s been worth it.

So, $700. It's a solid figure, but not so much when you consider the outlay. So far, my rough costs have been –

$650 – production costs (cover design, formatting etc)

$200 – advertising (paperback giveaways, competitions, ads sites, websites etc)

And how about time?

It’s impossible to tell for sure, but at a rough estimate over the last year I’ve spent an average of 2 hours a day on writing, advertising, designing covers, formatting . . . so even if I hadn’t had the expenditures I would still have earned less than $1 per hour for my efforts.

What does this tell me?

That self-publishing is no easy cash grab. I have a day job and some days I’m out of the house working from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fitting in so much work on self-publishing around that was pretty hard. In layman’s terms, I busted my ass on this.

Am I satisfied?

I don’t consider myself a flash in the pan or a fly-by hoping to make a quick buck. I am a careerist and sooner or later this will be my full time job. It’s not open for debate. The number of great reviews I’ve had back up my own confidence in my material. I’m currently working on a seven year plan to go full time (by the time I’m 40) so I have six to go. As I write this I’ve already had 113 sales in January which is 528 in my first year. If someone had offered me that at the beginning of 2012 I would have jumped all over it.

While some people blow up with just one or two books and start selling by the thousand, I never realistically expected that to happen to me. I’ve always been a grafter, but that’s fine. Health permitting I’ll be putting out the same amount of product (and hopefully more) each year. Unless there’s some random market crash I only expect things to improve.

I’ll save what I’ve learned from self-publishing over the last year for another post, but self-publishing has already achieved what I needed it to achieve.

It has saved me as a writer.

For years I wrote roughly a novel a year, but by the age of 30 (2009, when I wrote Tube Riders) the years of rejection and failure to find a publisher had taken its toll and my creativity was at an all time low.

Back in June last year, three months after I published Tube Riders, I realised that it was time to start writing again. In the past seven months I’ve written a shade over 275,000 words, or three good-length novels. That is my most productive period ever, and with 24,000 words in January so far it is showing no signs of abating. I’m back, and writing better than ever.

And I’m committed to continuing to improve. Not just my books, but my knowledge of the business side of self publishing.

There’s a lot more to come from me. I hope you’re looking forward to it.

CW

24^th Jan 2012

The Hunger Games vs The Tube Riders

Over the last weekend I bought and read the first volume in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy.  I’d heard a lot about it but bought it kind of on a whim while I was picking up a few other books.  I read it over three days (usually takes me a month to read a book that long) and thought it was really good.

By a slightly scary coincidence (no, it had nothing to do with me) a new review last Monday for my book The Tube Riders had this to say -

“If you loved The Hunger Games then you will love this one. I couldn't wait to read what happened next and will definently (sic) buy the sequel.”

After reading THG, I have to say that there are definite similarities.  Therefore, I thought it would be fun to write an utterly pretentious blog comparing the merits of a multi-million selling series (with a movie to boot) against my book, which at last count had sold about 150 copies.

I’ll try to be as objective as possible, because this isn’t supposed to be about which book is better, just how they compare.

(be warned, there are some spoilers coming up)

The World

Hunger Games is set in a future North America called Panem.  The capital city is called Capitol, and the rest of the “world” is split up into 12 districts, each of which serves a different function.  There is some mention early on of wars and natural disasters that have changed the landscape.

Tube Riders is set in the renamed Mega Britain in 2075.  Mega Britain is very recognizable as Britain except for surface detail, such as the perimeter walls surrounding the cities and the buried towns and removed roads in the countryside, known as the Greater Forest Areas, all of which is designed to prevent movement of population.

Result - Draw

The Leader

The Hunger Games doesn’t really involve President Snow too much.  We don’t know much about him except that he is angry at Katniss at the end.

In The Tube Riders, the leader, Maxim Cale, known as the Governor, is a seven-foot tall albino black guy with red eyes and telekinetic powers.  He has been in charge of the country for 40 years give or take, and doesn’t seem to age.  He features fairly strongly as a major character.

Winner - the Governor

Katniss Everdeen vs Marta Banks

In the battle of the leading ladies, Katniss is clearly the more badass in terms of skill, although Marta can do a mean tube ride.  Katniss has excellent hunting, archery and foraging skills.  Marta, having grown up in the urban waste land of London Greater Urban Area, is only really good at tube riding, although she can use a knife a little and “does what’s necessary” to get by in London.

Winner (in a fight) - Katniss

Winner (catching food) - Katniss

Winner (catching a train) - Marta

Peeta vs Switch

The battle of the leading men swings back the other way.  I really liked Peeta.  I thought he was kind hearted, gentle (except in a few certain situations), and honest.  He also seems to be pretty good looking.  Switch is a scrawny little man with a bad eye, no redeeming features and will kill without mercy or morals.

Winner (beauty contest) - Peeta 

Winner (fight) - Switch

Cato vs Dreggo

Cato was the only real villain in THG, and he had very little screen time, mainly because the book is written from Katniss’s point of view.  Dreggo, on the other hand, gets almost as much screen time in TTR as Marta, has been described as “a walking horror show” and is a hate-filled agent of vengeance.

Winner - Dreggo

The Brutality

I was very surprised with how much blood and gore was in THG.  Not that it bothers me, I just wondered how such violence can be considered YA yet there wasn’t a swear word in sight.  People get blown to pieces by landmines but no one so much as utters s**t.  TTR contains the same levels of violence but there’s a lot more bad language to go with it.  Mind you, TTR isn’t aimed at the YA market, whatever that really means.

Draw

The pacing

The Hunger Games really raced along.  I actually thought the whole reaping part was over way too soon (one chapter) while the middle section before the games started was too slow.  The Games themselves, though, absolutely rattled along.

Here is where it’s difficult to comment objectively (because I wrote it) but reviewers have tended to agree to the same with The Tube Riders.  However, with so many POV characters it is inevitable that there are some slower chapters.  Overall, though, for a 600-page book people seem to agree that it’s pretty fast paced.

Draw, THG maybe shades it

Sales figures

Millions vs not a lot.

Winner - The Hunger Games by an absolute mile!

I hope you enjoyed this little comparison of what I think are two awesome books.  Most people are familiar with one but I think the other is worth checking out.  Yeah, so you might think I’m being a pretentious writer in comparing my little book with a literary sensation, but you don’t need to take my word for it.  All you have to do is go over to Amazon and read the Look Inside (five chapters) and then come back and agree/disagree.  Nothing lost, nothing gained.

I haven’t read parts 2 & 3 of The Hunger Games Trilogy but I will be doing so shortly.  As for parts 2 & 3 of The Tube Riders, they’re currently under construction.  Watch this space.

CW

8th Jan 2012