
My Amazon bestseller made me nothing - acdanger
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/hey_amazon_wheres_my_money/
======
lukev
I think the biggest problem here is the word 'bestseller'. 4000 is not a
number I would associate with that word, prior to knowing what algorithms are
used to determine those lists.

My guess is that 'bestseller' lists are far more a marketing tool than any
reflection of how books are selling.

I've published technical books that sold in that rough ballpark, and I can
tell you they never came near any bestseller list (nor should they have).

~~~
znowi
Yes. I was all sympathetic with a poor _famous_ author who made pathetic $12k
on his _bestseller_ until I hit the number of copies sold: 4000... Huh?
Suddenly, $12k sounds like a pretty good deal.

I should note though that when I hear about authors of tech books (O'Reilly
and the like), I do tend to imagine a Jaguar in their garage :) But also a lot
more copies sold.

And also, 8 months delay on sales you made July last year, that's just not
right. I thought if you're indie the turnaround is much faster with better
pay. Apparently not.

~~~
coldtea
> _I should note though that when I hear about authors of tech books (O'Reilly
> and the like), I do tend to imagine a Jaguar in their garage :) But also a
> lot more copies sold._

You'd be surprised on both counts. Actual rundowns I've read from technical
authors can be even worse than the 4000/$12,000 mentioned here -- except if we
talk about something like "The C programming language" or "Learning Perl".

Also: remember that 30% cut that Apple/Google etc takes of off your apps and
e-books?

Well, traditional publishers take something like 90%.

~~~
olefoo
Your math is a bit wonky and you are missing some aspects of the traditional
publishing contract.

The traditional publishing deal involves the author getting an advance (cash
up front) which they do not have to pay back unless they fail to deliver the
manuscript. So the publisher takes on the risk that the book won't cover it's
advance. The publisher also manages book production and distribution and
publicity, to do those things the publisher keeps staff on hand in some fairly
expensive office space ( publishing happens in Manhattan, or used to ). All of
which add up to a pretty good deal for authors whose work is salable.

With Amazon or Apple, the author takes on the risk, and all the costs of
production ( poorly edited ebook only editions aren't going to sell as well as
actual books ) and all the costs of marketing and promoting their work. The
only thing that's taken care of is distribution; for which they give up 30%,
not the actual cost of distribution.

So the new deal is riskier and less certain ( if you pay an editor, a book
designer, a publicist etc. ) you might wind up losing money.

~~~
CurtMonash
In theory, the advance is just an advance, and publishers could ask for the
portion back that is not covered by royalties. However, they almost never do
that. It's one of the few ways in which publishers actually behave decently
towards authors.

~~~
olefoo
Well, part of that is that authors are not as a rule gifted with assets, so
it's a fruitless task to recover money from them. The other part is that it
looks bad. And the third leg is that that is how commercially successful
authors subsidize the unsuccessful.

------
cjoh
I'm an author who wrote an Amazon "bestseller" -- it was the #1 Culture book
in the store for six months, and the #1 Technology book for about one month.
(<http://amzn.to/infodiet>)

I sold more than 4,000 books (closer to about 15,000), but have basically made
a relatively comparable amount of money from royalties from the book.

That said, if you're writing a book looking to profit from the sales of the
book, you're doing it wrong. I easily pull in six figures for speaking fees
that result from having written a book. I wasn't getting those offers before
having written the book.

Maybe fiction is a bit different. But you can always find a way.

------
shalmanese
I think most people are vastly over-estimating the number of books that get
sold.

From <http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/advice/bestlist.htm> which is
an old resource but the numbers are still within the same range:

"It does not take a tremendous amount of book sales to make a bestseller list.
Depending upon the competition and category, sales of 50,000 books through
bookstores over a period of weeks could do it. Some books have made #10 with
sales of just 3,000 in one week. Most print runs are just 5,000 books, so
3,000 is a lot of books. On the other hand, with 119,000 titles being
published each year, there is some competition for attention. In 1995, there
were 93 hardcover fiction titles that sold more than 100,000 copies and 101
hardcover nonfiction title over that number. Softcover books did even better.
Most first printings are 5,000 copies, and any book selling 5,000 copies a
year is considered successful."

------
scottfr
And I just raised $27,000 to fund writing my first book [1]. I'm a first time
author and despite my best efforts agents and publishers wouldn't touch the
project.

The world is changing rapidly, and traditional publishing just doesn't make
sense for many authors anymore. Also of course refer to the recent discussion
on O'Reilly's changing practices [2].

[1] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/605480326/beyond-
connect...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/605480326/beyond-connecting-
the-dots) [2] <http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1521>

~~~
petercooper
Congratulations! In particular, I'm very impressed you got 9 backers at over
$1000 for a book, you must have a very good following/dedicated fanbase.

~~~
scottfr
Yes, I'm surprised by that myself.

~~~
stfu
Congratulations Scott! Really cool project. Love the idea of interactive
models within a book.

Can you give us some thoughts on how you went about promoting the project? Are
you guys very active in the SystemsWiki and were able to leverage that
community?

------
jmduke
This is a catchy title, but a more accurate one would be:

 _> My book on Amazon sold 4,000 copies and made me $12,000._

~~~
helipad
Indeed. 4,000 books gets you on a bestseller list these days? Methinks the
algorithm writers need to get their pencils out.

~~~
petercooper
[http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-
news/bo...](http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-
news/bookselling/article/56284-how-many-copies-does-it-take-to-be-an-amazon-
bestseller.html)

So it seems you can hit the top 5 on Amazon with 300 sales a day.

------
larrys
This story while interesting is just a creative way to draw more attention and
get people to buy the book.

"In one more week I was going to be a millionaire."

We don't know how long of a period it was on the best seller list at all. It
almost certainly made it to the list because of activity following mention (as
the author points out) "the story went viral and was featured in places like
Forbes, Time magazine and NPR’s Weekend Edition" which had nothing to do with
the quality of the writing but more of a David and Goliath human interest
story.

So what we have is a book that made a list because of a cease and desist
letter which got it major media attention which _created a concentrated
interest in the book_.

The takeaway from this is that he made roughly $3 per book for a book that is
sold by amazon at $14.95. (Also the kindle edition is less and I don't know
how that factors into the count obviously.) Also to find creative ways to get
publicity for your creative vessel. Pissing off a large company is certainly
one way to do that. Then after the attention that generates dies down simply
write another angle about how well you didn't do and get more publicity. I
didn't buy the book but I did look at it on Amazon. Obviously the Salon story
and links to it will help him sell more books.

~~~
revelation
And he didn't even change the cover after the C&D:
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621050203>

Maybe they should have sent something else than a strongly worded letter.

~~~
larrys
I just read the letter from JD and there are many fascinating things about the
way it was written including the offer to pay a reasonable amount to re-do the
cover.

This is definitely a letter that, prior to the Internet, would never have been
written. It goes out of it's way to not appear to be a "dick" and appeal
almost in a friend like way to make the person receiving want to do "the right
thing" by not making a threat. I've never seen a letter written like this in
this situation (having received them and seen many over the years.)

I wouldn't have let an opportunity like this pass. I would have seen what JD
would pay to redo the cover, let them do it, and garnered even more publicity.
And maybe pocketed some money by subcontracting the labor. The cover design
isn't that critical and the extra press mention would most likely drive more
sales. As only one example they could have said "it will cost me $5000 to
redo" found someone to do it for much much less and pocketed the difference
AND gotten more publicity. And I've done things like this is the past with
large corporations they will write a check to dispose of a problem they won't
say "um we want to have our artist do it". If the price is reasonable they
would just pay. (The only question is how much I would have started much
higher than $5k that is arbitrary..)

~~~
macchina
The producers of Warhammer 40k ought to take note.[1]

"Trademark Bullying" has totally gotten out of hand.[2] Brands have a duty to
protect their rights, but a letter like this is really all that's necessary.
Good on Jack Daniels. There is no reason to send indie publishers to the
poorhouse over trifling infringement.

1\. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5176820>

2\. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/stupid-lawyer-
tricks-a...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/stupid-lawyer-tricks-and-
government-officials-who-are-helping-them)

------
forgingahead
This is like saying "I got featured on TechCrunch and Hacker News and my
business STILL failed!" 4000 books => $12K seems about right.

A good way to apply this to life: Vanity metrics mean nothing. Recognition is
largely irrelevant to fiscal well-being. It's the same in the fashion industry
-- most "famous" brand-name folks work for other big companies to pay the
bills. I don't know who designs the jeans for Gap, but I'm sure he/she gets
paid a ton of money.

------
alanfalcon
I'm not sure there's a good reason to go with an Indy publisher these days.
Self publishing is stupidly easy and a heck of a lot more profitable. My
Amazon #50,000 seller[1] has earned me over $2,000 so far and of course nobody
ever wrote an article about my little book. If I'd had his publishing deal I
expect I'd have exactly the same amount of publicity but have earned maybe
$600 or so. And I wouldn't have been getting monthly checks within three
months of sale as I do by directly publishing.

[1] This fluctuates wildly, of course. Right now I'm around #18,000 thanks to
giving away 3,000 free copies of the book over two days, but just before the
promo I was at #400,000. Point is I've never been anywhere visible on any
lists.

(His point stands that simply being a best seller isn't automatically quit-
the-day-job money, but at least if you self publish you control your costs and
most of what money you do earn.)

~~~
ky3
> Self publishing is stupidly easy and a heck of a lot more profitable.

The tradeoff used to be that if you'd go to a publisher they'd do your
marketing. Every creative type I know of is not only utterly n00bish when it
comes to marketing but also regards it as a disease you wouldn't touch with a
long pole.

But these days even famous publishers expect authors to do their own marketing
[1]. Every last bit of it.

So yes, go self publish! Take a course on marketing while at it. Does wonders.

[1] <http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1521>

------
mattmaroon
That letter from Jack Daniels is impressive. I've never seen anyone be so nice
about that. I've received a couple myself (my favorite was from Zamboni) and
they've not been hostile but nobody offered to pay money to switch it.

~~~
triplesec
Oh it's nice, but with deeply crafty intent behind it, because they know it's
hard to enforce. See the bolded "optional" reply date? Meant to look like
velvet glove tactics: this scares most non-lawyered up people I'm sure.

------
tomku
The difference between his book and "Gone Girl" or "Fifty Shades of Grey" is
that he sold a couple thousand copies in a week and dropped off the radar,
while those books are numbers 12 and 9 on the list almost 9 months later.
Being a best-seller for a week is a great way to sell a couple thousand
copies, but you don't sell hundreds of thousands or millions due to one week
at the top caused by some temporary publicity.

------
caffeine5150
I know someone whose husband wrote a business leadership book (a crowded
category). The book hit the New York Times best seller list for a couple
weeks. However, my impression was that he simply paid a publicist (or agent or
whatever) who was able to make that happen in some narrow subcategory of the
list for 2 weeks. The sole purposes was that on their next printing, they
could add the "New York Times Bestseller" badge to the cover. It sounded like
a game.

~~~
jld
Yes, they say it costs about $75,000 to buy yourself on to the best seller
lists.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732386430457831...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323864304578316143623600544.html?mod=itp)

------
pmtarantino
You made 12.000 and you sold 4.000 copies. I don't see the problem with that.

------
drcode
There's nothing more annoying than some person with a vanity project
complaining they aren't getting rich.

------
scott_meade
I'll admit, I fell for the title. I read it because I was intrigued to find
out how an independent author would have gotten $0 for having sold > 1 book.

When I got to the "$12,000" I immediately felt tricked. Sure, it is in one
sense pocket-change for a "bestseller", but it's not "nothing".

------
macspoofing
He created something that moved 4000 units . $12,000 for 4000 (~$15/unit)
units is pretty darn good. If you spent a year or two developing an iOS game,
your haul would have been half that.

It looks like people don't buy books at high enough quantities to make it
worth the effort.

------
arkem
Does anyone else think that his publishing contract is odd? He mentions it
being a 50% revenue split after publishing expenses, I was under the
impression that any contract that put any of the costs onto the author were
considered bad to the point of exploitative[1][2].

It obviously couldn't have worked out terribly for him if he was making $3 a
sale but I wonder if this is more common than I thought.

[1] Hydra's Contract: [http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/06/note-to-sff-
writers-ra...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/06/note-to-sff-writers-
random-houses-hydra-imprint-has-appallingly-bad-contract-terms/)

[2] Yog's Law: <http://www.sff.net/people/yog/>

~~~
triplesec
it's evil, but normal. And not as bad as music contracts.

------
jdrenterprises
"Bestseller" does not equal income. I think there are a percentage of authors
who believe that because they get on a bestseller list, they are going to be a
millionaire.

The article stated 4000 copies sold, and $12000 in income. Math is math, no
matter how you look at it. $3 a copy in income isn't all that bad at all.

The author's book was priced at $8.95 according to the article (Kindle
version). Perhaps the author should consider price adjustments to see if the
market will respond with more sales?

And this all assumes the author did a nice job with their marketing efforts in
the first place... because "bestseller" also doesn't mean book sales on
autopilot.

~~~
manojlds
The author says others, like his wife's family, believe that authors on best
sellers lists make millions.

~~~
jdrenterprises
Yes, but the article title makes it sound like the author got screwed even
though he made the bestseller list.

$12000 isn't nothing, and Amazon has nothing to do with the results an author
gets from their book in terms of units sold, except for providing search
results.

Just seems like one of those attempts to get eyeballs to an article to me.

------
Jaygitau
I think he misunderstood. Bestseller lists are based on velocity + sales. Not
just pure sales.

Someone could sell 4K books in one week and make a list. Versus someone who
sold 1,000 books per week and sold 52K books total and they wouldn't make any
list at all. It's all very screwed up.

Really, it's a measurement of short term popularity more than anything.

------
ndessaigne
Interestingly, it turns out you can _buy_ your way onto a best-seller list:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732386430457831...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323864304578316143623600544.html)

(not saying that was the case here)

------
kayoone
Misguiding headline. 4000 sales of something netting 12k USD isnt all that
bad.

As an example, 4000 sales of an iOS app probably put you in some of Apples Top
Lists as well and could amount to the same amount of money, but its nothing
super interesting or unexpected.

------
RyanZAG
As an interesting point, there is probably more to having a hit book than just
'bestseller'.

Compare the number of reviews - I assume number of reviews correlates well to
number of sales.

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621050203>

[http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Grey-Book-
Trilogy/dp/0345...](http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Grey-Book-
Trilogy/dp/0345803485/ref=zg_bs_books_9)

18,000 vs 21

------
alanfalcon
The website novelrank.com seems to have a decent handle on how book sales on
Amazon translate into sales rank. And according to them, the current best-
selling Kindle book has some 1500 sales this month.

<http://www.novelrank.com/asin/B00BLTOXEI>

------
bjourne
The authors point is that this is how poorly you'll do monetarily even if you
reach bestseller status. Even if we assume a whopping 25% of all books becomes
bestsellers, that means 75% of all books don't and are likely to net their
authors _even less money_.

------
smtddr
Well I don't know the time/effort/resources that went into making the book but
$12,000 USD is not what I would refer to as "nothing". I have side projects
that I'd _love_ to make even $1,000 on.

~~~
manojlds
But for a writer, it's not a side project, is it?

~~~
maxerickson
Lots of authors are arguably aspiring writers.

------
RougeFemme
I think the key is that was an _Amazon_ bestseller. Not that Amazon is
anything to sneeze at, but, regardless of the alogorithm used, it's already
limited as an _Amazon_ bestseller.

------
ams6110
My takeaway: being an author is like being a startup software developer. A few
hit it big. Really Big. Tom Clancy. Instagram. The other 99.5%? You never hear
about them.

------
brown9-2
I find it more baffling that the author doesn't have a way to know the exact
number of books sold by the publisher.

------
smnrchrds
Is there an study about statistical distribution of money among authors? I am
most interested in median income.

~~~
rmc
Yes I've seen a few places. Rather than median income, the inequality indexes
(like GINI) are interesting numbers. Book authors have income equality worse
than 3rd world kleptomaniac dictatorships. Sometimes 5 authors will account
for like 70% of all income.

------
icelancer
> The book sold plus or minus 4,000 copies.

So... 0 to 8,000?

~~~
jld
Actually, somewhere between -4000 and 4000.

~~~
icelancer
That was my other guess.

------
BigBalli
...now let's all be nice, appreciate the hard work (of riding PR waves) and
buy his book <http://amzn.to/12Z6uDs>

~~~
sync
That's BigBalli's affiliate link. Here's a non-affiliate link:
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621050203>

