What exactly is self-publishing success?
I just read this article announcing that self-published titles are enjoying a lot of success on the best seller lists. Here is the headline of the article on Digital Book World announcing this monumental success for self-published authors. Self-Published Ebooks Keep Ahead on Best-Seller List
Um, but when I read it, something seemed awfully wrong. Here is an image grab from the article. The top two self-published titles are a miserable $0.99 each! So the authors get to collect only 35% of this, due to Amazon’s penalty on ebooks below $2.99. For ebooks above $2.99, Amazon pays 70% royalty. So who’s winning and who’s losing out here?
So much for success, when self-published ebooks are between one tenth and one third of the price of the other books on the list. Well, I suppose traditional publishers have to pay for their champagne lunches. I couldn’t help but notice that Stepbrother Dearest is taking a dive down the charts. Too expensive perhaps?
The only salient fact that I took from this list is that it really must take an enormous book marketing budget to justify, and then to sell an ebook for $12.99. Not a budget self-publishers can afford. I was left to wonder what the paperback of this book, Yes Please, costs, but there wasn’t one listed on Amazon. But the hard cover is only $17.95! What? $12.99 for the ebook and only $5.00 more for a hard cover copy? The publishing world is badly twisted.
Oh well. So we still live with the very ugly $0.99 noose tied firmly around self-published authors’ necks. Hardly fair though.
Here is the link if you want to read the full article. Self-Published Ebooks Keep Ahead on Best-Seller List
I know several self-published authors who charge five or six bucks a book, and they say they’re earning a living, so I can only assume that for some, selling more copies is a bigger priority.
I guess publishers have a lot of overhead, but I agree, 12 bucks does seem like an awful lot of money to pay for a digital file. :/
Personally, one of the great pleasures of being an indie writer is to sell my books for 99 cents or $2.99. I look at all of these $12.99 e-books and my hackles raise just a little bit. I believe that a book ought to be affordable – and, being a working man with a working man’s wage I do not see $12.99 as being “affordable” – ESPECIALLY for an e-book.