Mark Twain looking over a few of my books.
Pricing books is tough, especially for those of us who rely on our own efforts to market.
When I started writing, my overarching aim was to build a readership. I wanted to share my stories with the world, and as a result, every other goal took second place. Unfortunately, my dreams were quickly dashed. I had a publisher who controlled my prices and wasn’t willing to negotiate. The prices were high (in my opinion), and the publisher didn’t support giveaways or discounts. My sales were horrible. My entire royalty for my first year was $8.00. No one was reading my books.
After six titles, I canceled my contracts and indie-published all my books. Immediately, I lowered prices and ran routine giveaways. As I suspected, my readership grew, and though I was lightyears away from making a living as an author, my…
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Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
I have a friend who has had 8 best-sellers in a row and figures she’s made MAYBE $500. You really can’t win. The publishers keep your money and it’s so hard to get the word out on Indie books. I don’t know how we are going to have literature in another generation. So many fine authors aren’t even getting published.
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The hardest part for me, Marilyn, is that everything changes so quickly, particularly related to technology – how books are delivered, received, and marketed. And there don’t seem to be any sure-win solutions (of course), so we need to wear multiple hats and have a lot of irons in the fires. If I ever figure it out… I promise to share. 🙂
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And yet, we have the opportunity to read so many stories no publisher would have taken up too.
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Thanks again, Sue, for sharing. It’s a topic for which I don’t have the answers, but I’m willing to experiment. 🙂 Happy Writing!
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I doubt if any of us have the answers to this one 🙂
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well, you know everybody and their aunt and uncle now has a self-published book out there. The Net is full of people on FB, Twitter, etc. hawking their books. The only people that I’ve seen who seem to be selling any books go to CON’s, dress up as various characters in costumes (preferably from their books), and are always promoting themselves on FB, Twitter, Goodreads, etc. And they create Youtube videos with their ‘friends’ who are authors interviewing them about their book, or have just text and music videos they’ve made on YT. And they have their author friends write them glowing testimonials on places like Amazon where they are selling all their books. Of course, you can always follow in Wayne Dyer’s path to success. Travel around the US with a station wagon full of your books, and get on every radio station in every city that will give you a slot to talk about your book. Seems like a lot of work to me but whatever. But I want you to know that I made a whole $7.00 on my book last year without doing any of the above. *L* And obviously, I don’t really care one way or another because the market
is flooded, I’m a realist on this subject, it would have sold far more copies 20 years ago
before the category ballooned on book shelves at Borders, certainly is no NY Times bestseller, will never be promoted by Oprah Winfrey book club, it’s a very small audience, and I don’t need to be famous or the money. But don’t give up – keep trying new things and one day you may say to yourself, ‘that guy was right – who gives a rat’s arse!’ Or you’ll hit the big one, get a screen play and a movie and end up like JR Rollins… Either way – Good luck!
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