
The Economics of Writing a Book - 1337biz
http://priceonomics.com/can-authors-make-money-selling-books/
======
cstross
Minor nit here:

 _Generally, publishers don’t just accept submissions from any aspiring
author. They go through agents. So you must first convince an agent that you
will be a lucrative investment. As a rule, agents take 15% of everything you
make from a book._

Speaking as an author, I love my agent. My agent is _on commission_ , on my
side. A good accountant is supposed to save you more money than they cost you;
a good agent will actually _make you more money_. The agent's job is to match
your book with the right editor, or if there's more than one who's likely to
buy it they run an auction: once they've got you a publisher they then squeeze
as much money out of the publisher as possible -- publishers _always_ low-ball
the advance and terms they offer an unrepresented author -- and then vet the
contract small-print for landmines. A survey an author of my acquaintance
conducted about five years ago came up with statistics for agented vs. un-
agented books in the SF/F field (which is what I write), polling professional
authors on a mailing list; in general, the book advances of authors who go
through agents are between 150% and 200% of those received by unagented
authors.

The benefits of an agent are likely to be lower for a non-fic author who
writes technical/business books on an irregular basis -- but still reasonable.
But for a fiction author who eats or starves on the basis of pushing out at
least one book a year, the agent's ability to market the author and push their
career track is essential.

They are, after all, on commission. And the more they can earn for the author,
the more they get to take home too.

~~~
Theodores
That stands to reason, however, do I decide to read a given book because it is
a 'find' of a given agent or published by a given publisher? Or do I read
something because it is heavily promoted? More importantly, do women - as in
those people that actually read a lot of books and keep the publishing
industry afloat - do they care about those behind the scenes that have
marketed a given book?

If a book comes from a word-of-mouth recommendation or if it is by a favourite
author then that will be sufficient to make the purchasing decision. Reviews
on Amazon are sufficient to make the purchasing decision. To a large extent a
book sells on merit and someone taking the self-publishing route with
something that people really do want to read and tell the world about can make
a success of it. They were not able to do so before the e-book revolution came
along, they were beholden to agents and publishers. Yes, people in the
publishing trade secretly fear 'they don't need us...!'

Here is something:

[http://www.literaryrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-
rej...](http://www.literaryrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-rejected/)

A good reading list (Da Vinci Code and a few others excepted).

~~~
adrianhoward
_" do I decide to read a given book because it is a 'find' of a given agent or
published by a given publisher? Or do I read something because it is heavily
promoted?"_

The former makes the latter more likely. A good agent will:

* get a better advance for the author, which makes it more likely the book will actually get finished

* be on the author's case to get the book finished and out (otherwise less money for them).

* negotiate better promotion with the publishers

* be on the publishers case to make sure that what was agreed actually happens

* etc. etc.

All of which make it more likely that the book gets published, gets promoted,
and so seen, and so read, and for that word-of-mouth to kick off ;-)

As for the number of successful authors who were rejected. That's to be
expected. Publishers are the VCs of the book industry. They say "no" a lot,
and most of the people they say "yes" to aren't hugely successful. Every VC
has said no to a successful company. Every publisher has said no to a
successful author. They doesn't mean either group are necessarily failing as a
whole.

To push the analogy - not everybody needs a VC. Some people can bootstrap.
Some people are happy taking on the extra load of marketing, financing,
producing, distributing, advertising, editing, admin, etc. etc. They find it
fun and interesting and are happy to take the time to do it. Some market
segments make that work considerably less than others do.

Other authors want to use that time to write.

~~~
Amygaz
I find the analogy to VCs interesting. In term of investing your own money (as
in investing in a fund), I have seen graphs showing that VCs have a pretty bad
ROI, if not the worst This is partly attributed to highly subjective decisions
from a small number of like-minded individuals, which often end up in poor and
mostly misapplied metrics. (I don't want this to be the debate, this is just
something I have seen reported many times, and at least once on HN not too
long ago, and most people seemed to agree with that, so lets assume that VCs
are not a very sound way to invest your retirement money).

Is the same true for Publishers? Could make a comparison using data about this
$15B revenue vs how much was spent?

Moreover, the best ROI for VC funded anything, seems to be an exit IPO. What
would be the equivalent of an "IPO" for authors? A movie?

~~~
adrianhoward
_" Is the same true for Publishers? Could make a comparison using data about
this $15B revenue vs how much was spent?"_

Good question. I have no idea ;-)

I guess it might not even matter. If what you're interested in is the best way
to get more good books into the world rather than make the most money. From my
experiences the folk in the publishing industry I've met are more interested
in the former than the latter.

The issue I was trying to highlight though is that many people seem to ignore
the "invest" part of what publishers do and see them as just people who print
books. The publishers advance + the publisher/agent network are an investment.
And with new authors an especially risky investment.

 _" Moreover, the best ROI for VC funded anything, seems to be an exit IPO.
What would be the equivalent of an "IPO" for authors? A movie?"_

I'm guessing getting a Terry Pratchett or a J. K. Rowling. That combination of
talent and public zeitgeist that produces wads of cash.

~~~
cstross
Alas, you can't gamble your company on getting a Terry Pratchett or J. J.
Rowling -- or a Dan Brown. Those folks come along once a decade in the
worldwide English language market. The overwhelming majority of works of
English language fiction sell less than 100,000 copies (hardcover, ebook, and
paperback, across the North American, and UK/Commonwealth markets, and in
translation); indeed, many sell fewer than 10,000 copies.

Most folks have _no_ idea how micro-targeted a niche business publishing is.
The goal of a large publisher is to find a lot of these small fry and hope one
or two of them will break through and make the big time; just one such author
can float the rest of the midlist at a publisher for many years, raising the
chance of another huge bestseller coming along.

~~~
adrianhoward
Actually, looking at the size of investment with individual authors, I guess
folk accelerator/seed folk like YC would be a better analogy than the average
VC firm.... but I'm really pushing the analogy too far.

------
DanielBMarkham
After 30 years of writing both professionally and privately while I learned to
code and then train teams, I finally came to the conclusion about what I am: a
writer. I'm not a celebrity writer, a best-selling writer, or a major-league
writer. Just a writer.

So I wrote a book. Because I have a passion for technology teams, my book was
about how to create, prioritize, and manage those to-do lists of work we all
have: backlogs. Because I'm a science fiction junkie, it had robots. And
because I'm a Douglas Adams fan, they were robotic chickens. Plug:
[http://www.amazon.com/Backlogs-1-Daniel-Markham-
ebook/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Backlogs-1-Daniel-Markham-
ebook/dp/B00JESGC6U)

I'm also a startup and business junkie, so even though I was writing the book
no matter what the business model, I spent some considerable time learning the
economics of book publishing. There are a hell of a lot of blog articles out
there titled something like "How I made Seven-Hundred Thousand Dollars
publishing an E-book. And you can too!"

Meh. Not so much.

I think it's clear that self-publishing is the future. Except for the big-
league authors, publishers have too much overhead to be very useful to us
small fry. However the author's conclusion is correct: _" Without question, we
can say that authors have extraordinary opportunities in the 21st century
publishing world. It’s just that making a living from book sales is rarely one
of them."_ There just isn't that much money for most authors no matter what
the publishing route.

The good news is that ebooks can be part of a larger conversation a writer has
with his audience. In this case, the process isn't to create a "business book
proposal" and then execute it; it's more like creating a community of people
with similar interests, then having a conversation with them. Ebooks can be a
useful part of that conversation.

Self-publishing rocks, but it's not just the old way of publishing where you
do it all yourself online. Wish it were that simple.

~~~
grey-area
I do agree with the other poster - a revised cover and proofreading (m ore)
would make a big difference to the perceived authority of your book. As a
designer I can't resist giving you some unsolicited advice here (apologies in
advance, feel free to ignore):

The central image is perfect - a good photo, and says everything you need it
to say. You should cut the other images (and in particular the awkward 80s
perspective grid layout), and just use that one image big on the front, with
the titling superimposed or on blocks of colour above and below. The result
would be an instant increase in credibility.

Now perhaps the WTF chicken reflects the folksy style of the writing inside,
so there is an argument for keeping that poking in from an edge (I see why you
have included this), but the rest of the images and their styling absolutely
do not and fight against your premise, and the green grid communicates 1980s
business title.

You may also want to consider a strapline that tells people what is in the
book, and why a rubber chicken features on the cover of a management book,
perhaps pair the chicken with that.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thanks guys for the great advice.

Many times HN is full of people just picking apart things because they can.
This was good stuff. Thank you.

------
graeme
Looking at the percentage of authors making more than $500 a year is
misleading. It's never been easier to publish a book, so the pool of marginal
books will grow. This doesn't necessarily reflect the prospects for serious
authors.

I'm a self published author. I make around $10,000 a year from print sales. My
books started as experiments. I already had e-books. I decided to turn two
manuscripts into print books.

I spent about $500 and two weeks on formatting and design. I didn't copy-edit
beyond what I had done myself. And I waited to see if it sold.

It did, so I turned more e-books into print books, and made new books aimed at
print.

But if the books hadn't sold, I would be classed as one of the poor authors
making less than $500 a year. But that would be a misleading data point,
because my initial foray was rather tentative.

~~~
wpietri
Could you say more about your approach to print? I'm reasonably far along with
a manuscript, and now I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. LeanPub
seemed nice and easy, but they don't do print.

~~~
graeme
Aaron Shepard's books give a pretty good overview of how to publish on amazon.

Createspace is pretty easy to use. If you already have a pdf you sell online,
you just have to format it for print, and put a cover on it. I found a
designer on elance to help me with both.

------
wisty
There's one very important service the publisher provided, which the author
missed: assessing whether the book was likely to be a successes. Telling
people who _won 't_ be successful not to bother (or at least, not to bother
with an expensive campaign) is costly, and an important service.

Ironically, the people who pay for this service (i.e. the people who are
successful) are the ones who don't really benefit from it.

~~~
lingben
LoL you have it backwards. Publishers do not have magical pre-cognition of the
success of a book. We have myriad examples of them shoveling money at authors
for books which bombed and we also have them turning up their noses at
manuscripts which went on to earn billions. Case in point, Harry Potter.

~~~
wisty
Survivorship bias. I bet they've knocked back a lot of books which wouldn't
have made a lot of money.

------
ivan_ah
> _Self-publishing [...] is historically unprecedented, providing the means
> for millions of people around the world to bypass the elitism of the
> publishing establishment [...]. In terms of access to a worldwide
> marketplace, it is fantastically democratic. In terms of access to financial
> success, it is far from it._

Just give me democratic and let's let product do the rest.

____________

Speaking of financials, another reference point to consider is selling via
lulu where profit would be $6/copy (15.99sale-8print-2lulucut=6), which is not
stellar but still beats amazon's predatory $4.18.

Print-on-demand and epub are nothing short of revolutionary. Suddenly the
incentives are right for people to earn a living from their intellectual
labour---distilling knowledge and sharing their research with others for
profit. I wouldn't buy a access to a website with lots of info on a subject,
but I would buy a book.

UPDATE: More thoughts on the subject: [http://minireference.com/blog/the-
economics-of-writing-books...](http://minireference.com/blog/the-economics-of-
writing-books-people-want/)

------
mark_l_watson
The author of the article perhaps should have spent more time discussing the
intangible benefits of writing a book.

I started writing using big name publishers and then switched to self
publishing. Because of being an author I have met many very interesting people
and I have received offers for interesting work. I can't quantify the value,
but it is huge.

------
mcguire
" _Having one’s first book published by a top five publisher conveys all kinds
of non-financial kudos to the author. That prestige is hard to replace with
pure sales dollars. In some cases, that prestige can lead to lucrative
opportunities like speaking gigs, increased seminar sales, and better academic
prospects._ "

Speaking as someone who has a very good reason for having gotten into
collecting bookcases (the last one is a sweet, 7', 6-shelf oak stack with
mullioned glass; when I saw it at an auction, I knew it had to come home with
me), this is really kind of a strange situation.

I recognize that many people, particularly commercially published authors, see
publishers as a source of prestige, which is what gives the publishers
prestige, but for me a publisher is more of a liability. If I see Apress,
Morgan Kaufmann, Springer, or (heaven forbid) Baen on a cover, I'm much more
likely to set it aside for later rather than buy it now. Offhand, I can't
think of any publisher that _adds_ something; maybe MITP, but academic books
are pretty sketchy anyway.

" _The benefits from the legitimacy of a well-received book go well beyond the
sales numbers, and working with an accomplished editor helped make the book a
critical success, earning positive reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus
Review._ "

One wonders whether the editors efforts best come under the heading of
"improving the book", or under "getting it on KR or PW's list".

------
davidw
Regarding one of the links in the article, I think Dinosaur Porn has got to be
up there with Bingo Cards in the department of opening your eyes to the
possibilities of a niche market.

------
JacobAldridge
Interesting that the main picture links to a Lifehacker article on saving
money on Textbooks. Somehow I managed to click the link and load _that_ page
without realising - wow did the title and first few comments here confuse me!

