Another Anti-Self-Publishing Hit Piece

BullOnly 40 authors “make money” on Amazon! The horror! All the rest don’t make any money says author Claude Forthomme on her blog. This startling claim came to my attention because it’s been making the rounds on Facebook, and my bull-sh*t detectors went off immediately.

It’s all about math. The actual announcement from Amazon was that close to 40 independent authors had sold more than a million copies of their e-books. Let’s assume an average sale price of $3.99, of which the author gets 70 percent, so we’re talking about $2.80/e-book. That means that if an author sold the minimum of one million in five years, they were netting $560,000/year. Awesome! But surely they’re not the only authors making money. What about the ones making $10,000/year or $50,000/year?

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And The Winners Are…

Off to the Post Office

Off to the Post Office

Actually, I can’t tell you. Goodreads is very big on protecting the privacy of people who enter—let alone win—book giveaway contests. In fact, it’s pretty much fire and forget for an author. Goodreads gave me the names and addresses of the winners so that I can mail out their free copies of Sacrifice the Living, but then I pretty much have to forget that I have the contact information of ten fans. I might as well throw these valuable leads into the garbage, because other than sending their winnings, I’m forbidden to contact them. If I do, I’ll be banned from ever doing a Goodreads book giveaway promotion again.

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A Goodreads Giveaway Contest

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Sacrifice the Living by Michael Andre McPherson

Sacrifice the Living

by Michael Andre McPherson

Giveaway ends November 14, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Package

A Book in the Mail

I always like to try new ways to market my books, and I especially like free ways to promote the novels. But I’m not always timely. A year ago, when I launched the print version of Sacrifice the Living, the novel became eligible for a Goodreads Giveaway. It was in the back of my mind, but I didn’t get around to reading the Frequently Asked Questions until today, and I discovered that the good people at Goodreads recommend doing a month-long Giveaway contest before a novel is published and a second one several months after it hits the shelves.

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Amazon Caught Me Gaming the System

A funny thing happened to my royalties from Amazon after I put a few of my short stories on KDP Select. They went up. I didn’t pay much attention at first, but I always seemed to be making more than I expected each month. I knew people were borrowing my short stories through Kindle Unlimited, but it wasn’t until I scrutinized the royalty statements that I understood what was going on.

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What I Learned About Kobo Writing Life

Mark Lefebvre, Director of Self-Publishing and Author Relations at kobo, didn’t just come to chat with us at The Toronto Indie Publishing Meetup, he brought us solid information about e-books sales, and he didn’t sugar coat it. Despite indie-publishing potentially throwing book sales wide open, a small number of authors still make a big chunk of the change, just like in the traditional publishing world.

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