Self Publishing: an Update

First a note: I am self published and “traditionally” published. I consider myself an advocate of both. In the light of recent online discussions I want to make that clear. I DO NOT believe “old school” publishing is dying. Nor do I believe self publishing is the wave of the future (and is going to crush the old regime). Both have their draws. Both have their flaws. And the number of self publishers and traditional publishers make it absolutely impossible for one way to be “the” way. Some publishers treat authors like money mills to be used up. Some self publishers throw any crap they think will stick up there. Some publishers treat their authors great and help them reach new audiences. Some self publishers are wonderful writers that write what traditional publishers don’t think is marketable and prove them wrong. These things are too diverse to be judged in a lump.

Okay, that said here’s my original post on my self publishing experience from last November. Since then amazon has gobbled up more market share, more people have jumped on the ebook bandwagon and that Amazon borrow club thingie started (clearly I didn’t join.)

I still have three self published books up, two are erotic romance books under a pseudonym and the other is a choose your own adventure book I wrote with Mini.

Book One is Private Lessons, the first in my erotic romance series, Deepdale Acres. It’s about 10k (about 40 pages) and published under the name M. Lush on Amazon, B&N and Smashwords. Also it has 3 4-star reviews.

Let’s see how it’s been selling.

Book Two is Running Free, book two in the Deepdale Acres series. It’s slightly longer, around 14k (50 pages). It has no reviews at all.

 

Let’s see how it’s been selling.

Book Three is On Halloween, the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book Mini and I wrote for her class. It’s about 25 pages and also has no reviews. It’s also selling next to nothing, 17 copies since November. (But it already accomplished it’s job of entertaining a bunch of 2nd & 3rd graders.)

So, in total my chart looks like this:

Updated conclusions:

-I can sell 20-50 copies a month on my own, with no real promo effort (you know, other than a decent product, editing and a not-terrible cover.) So any publisher I work with has got to be able to do better for me than I can do on my own (which shouldn’t be hard, which is why they better be able to do better.)

-While Amazon is a better seller, I’m selling enough on B&N that I cannot justify giving Amazon an exclusive.

-Romance sells better than kid books.

-Smashwords has sold 2 copies for me in THREE years.

-Self publishing makes sense with SOME projects because here you see hundreds of sales I would not have made with these projects sitting in my submissions folder.

-My romance and SF/F/H audiences DO NOT cross. (Which directly affected my decision to self publish. Private Lessons had been accepted then dropped for various reasons twice and I not longer wanted to struggle to sell projects that wouldn’t even feed my “main” career.)

-All my self published works are projects I wrote for fun and personal satisfaction. Sales are just a bonus. A pleasant bonus.

-I need to experiment with pricing, including free and higher pricing.

-I definitely need to get the other two projects I have finished but needing polish done and available.

Tomorrow I plan to comment on some of the blog posts about self publishing I’ve been reading the last month or so.