It's Not About All The Money Right Now

I love listening to authors talk about how much money they plan on making with their books. Unfortunatly, I think this talk of money they dream of, these ultimate contracts and quick money is far from a reality. I am sorry to say this, but making money in publishing is not something that happens overnight but takes a while. You build your readership and with every new book, the sales should go up (assuming you know how to constantly produce).

I was thinking about this recently when I read an article about (once again) another multi-published author throwing in the towel on traditional publishing and turning to a straight out electronic self-published business. Their comment all of the time is the money. They will make more money this way than with traditional publishing. But...

It is important to remember a few things about this.

First of all, these are multipublished authors and they are selling their backlists. Who will buy the books? Probably the same people who bought them first in a print format. These people are simply re-stocking their book shelves electronically.

Second, my question is always, what is wrong with the sales of their current books? I did look into a couple of these authors that have made this move, and what I found out wasn't a shock. Their last several books didn't do well. In one case, the author wasn't given a new contract from the publisher. Hmmm?

Thirdly, why not stay in the traditional publishing business, take the bigger money from the print book sales, keep those people happy and then when those sales drop, sell the backlist to the self-pub e-pubs.

I bring all of this up because many of the unpublished authors out there are getting the wrong impression from all of this media hype from the bigger authors. These new authors may get the "quick money" and the "higher percentages on royalties" but that only comes with sales and a following. I am sorry to say it but the friends in your neighborhood, and those you have added to your blog's readership on what ever you do will not get you to the sales you want.

Don't get me wrong. I am not against e-publishing. I am certainly in favor of higher royalty rates for the authors out there. But please, think before you leap.

Scott