With the State of the economy as it currently is, would you consider self publishing?
What are the pros and cons into self publishing. It seems to me that more and more people are considering this route. Have you considered it or are you doing it or have you done it ?
Self-Publishing Statistics May 30th 2012
Despite some highly publicized successes, the average book from a POD service sells fewer than 200 copies--mostly to the authors and to "pocket" markets surrounding them--friends, family, local retailers who can be persuaded to place an order.
Respondents who’d had their work rejected by traditional publishing and then opted to self-publish it were among the lowest earners.
Rejection isn’t all bad though. 32% of the “Top Earners” tried and failed to get a traditional publishing deal before self-publishing, but now make a living from selling their work.
Self-publishing authors who went straight to publication without submitting their work to traditional publishers earned 2.5 times more than those who submitted it and got rejected.
29% of the Top Earners have an agent, compared to 10%. Having an agent was correlated with earnings more than three times higher than unrepresented respondents.
Respondents who paid professionals for services like story-editing, copyediting and proofreading earned on average 13% more than those who didn’t. Hiring a professional cover designer earned them on average 18% more. Yet, not all paid-for services translate into a significant increase in earnings. Self-publishers who hired professional e-book formatters only saw average earnings of 1% more.
The Top Earners group spent more time writing than they did marketing, and those in the group who spent the least time marketing were making the most money. Out of all respondents, those who spent the most time marketing earned the least.
Top Earners had almost four times as many reviews for their most recent book than authors outside of the group, and those books were earning those Top Earners six times as much revenue for those who reported the figures for their second most recent book, the Top Earners still had about the same amount of reviews but the revenue gap rose to fourteen times the income of other author’s second most recent books, which had been on the market for about 14 months.
Another factor that seemed to improve the earning power of a self-published author is to make a book trailer. Romance writers also did better than science-fiction, fantasy or literary fiction writers.
Yet, the most effective single tactic, submitting to popular reviewers on Amazon, was the least used. Authors who used this strategy received 25% more reviews than average, and more importantly, 32% more revenue for their latest release.
David - my experience of POD is resoundingly positive in terms of both print quality and availability, though I need to clarify the latter by saying that multiples (20-40) ordered via the intermediary took weeks to arrive. This was frustrating when LS advertise turnaround in 24 hours but could be due to the intermediary's issues, or volumes going through LS at the time.
Of course POD wouldn't work well if you're getting stock into bookshops, which generally have a returns policy.
That's given me some food for thought, lots of good info to adsorb.
Thanks David...
Regaeds