How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth Godin

IIRC the Gini coefficient among authors in the UK is something like 0.7. The income stratification is insane.<p>Tim Ferris's figures match my experience. What he <i>doesn't</i> make explicit is that "publishing" is about fourteen different vertically integrated businesses flying in loose formation -- genre fiction publishing, for example (my stomping ground) is utterly different from business publishing or academic publishing, although the products are <i>sometimes</i> sold via the same retail channels -- and the prospects for a successful career vary drastically between fields. Nor does success in one field imply a track record transferable sideways into another publishing field.<p>I'd also pick a nit: in my experience, ebook sales (and Amazon Kindle store sales in particular) are <i>dwarfed</i> by hardcover sales -- by a 50:1 ratio, in fact. Amazon are almost certainly cherry-picking if they can come up with books where Kindle sales outstrip hardcover. However, that's looking backwards -- it's fairly clear that ebooks are a rapidly growing sector and in another 2-5 years they'll definitively overtake hardcover sales by volume, if not by revenue. (Hardcovers net roughly $16 after discount, of which 10-15% goes to the author; Kindle store books net $7-10, of which Amazon takes a 30% cut before 5-10% of the remainder goes to the author.)

"If you choose to go digital only as an e-book, this is where profit rules and amazing numbers can be achieved. How amazing? I know one man who nets between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 per month with a single e-book and affiliate cross-selling to his customer lists. I’m not kidding."<p>Any idea of what ebook is he talking about?

I didn't find the post to be very useful, but this part is worth the read:<p>&#62;<i>I believe (conjecture, yes) that the figure we are missing is Books-Per-Person.</i><p>&#62;If you have a Kindle, as I do, how many books did you buy in the first week or two? How many unread books do you have on your Kindle? Unlike with print books, you don’t have to look at a stack of unread material like undone homework. Ergo, you purchase more digital books than you would ever purchase in print. If Amazon is selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 print books, I wouldn’t be surprised if 10-20 people are responsible for the former, whereas 80-100 people are responsible for the latter. This reflects that Kindle owners are buying more books per capita, not that paper purchasers are buying fewer.

I <i>want</i> to hate Tim Ferris for his persona and frequent exaggerations of the truth, but <i>grits teeth</i> he writes good stuff sometimes.

Good article! Don't skip the video.<p>I have written several books, and only a few have sold well, so I have to admit that my net worth would be more if I had spent my writing time doing working (software development). However, echoing the article:<p>1. writing books gives an author access to very interesting people and experiences<p>2. writing has a long tail of benefits that often come in the form of interesting work and offers for collaboration

This all ties in with a blog that I just started reading yesterday. It's written by a genre fiction writer that has also made the switch to predominantly ebooks. I guess the most relevant post is <a href="http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/08/beginning-of-end.html" rel="nofollow">http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/08/beginning-of-end.html</a> but the whole blog is really interesting and worth reading.<p><a href="http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/</a>

He's wrong about paperback, they're a gold mine for authors. Halving the price doesn't multiply the number of purchases by 2, it multiplies it by 20. That's why ebooks outsell hardcovers on Amazon but are still a trivial fraction of overall rev.<p>Also, it is not any more work for the author. You usually don't even have to sign any additional paperwork. It's extra work for the publisher to be sure, but it's all gravy for you.

For anyone interested in a "programming book" specific perspective: <a href="http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/" rel="nofollow">http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/</a>

As much as I enjoyed the article, the title is simply too SEO for my stomach. "Money"? Check. Famous guy's name? Check. At least 10 words? Check.<p>I miss the long-gone days of clever, concise and original titles for stuff.