The Amazon Kindle was not the first electronic reader on the market. Sony had been marketing one for the better part of a year, but Amazon took the concept mainstream, making it the first e-reader that the average layperson could get his or her mitts upon. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now there are a few players on the field, but the economics of e-book are similar and the Kindle still represents the bulk of the e-book market. Therefore, it\u2019s a good model to use when comparing the numbers side of e-book publishing versus the dead tree model. <\/p>\n
Let\u2019s assume for a second that a big dead-tree publishing house is releasing your hardcover book at the usual price of (let\u2019s say) twenty-four American dollars. Assuming a middling hardcover royalty rate of 12.5%, your share is an even three bucks for every copy sold. Your agent get his or her grubby mitts on 15% of your income, leaving you with a tidy sum of $2.55 for every copy sold. <\/p>\n
Now, if you were to publish the same book yourself on the Kindle, you could pulled down the same three bucks (and more, without sharing a red cent with a grubby agent) selling the book for less than five dollars. Now, given that you and I are relative unknowns, I think we\u2019ll both sell a hell of lot more copies at $5.00 than we would at $24.00. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d you say, \u201cbut the publisher will promote my book, and I\u2019ll sit next to Ellen Degeneres on TV.\u201d <\/p>\n
For the average author not named James Patterson, that moment typically happens shortly after pigs are seen soaring over the frozen landscape of hell. Most books aren\u2019t promoted at all, or barely at all. As the author who slaved for hours in solitude, putting words after other words, you are also responsible for the heavy lifting for marketing your book, just as if you published it yourself. <\/p>\n
And the sales and income from a book, published traditionally, wouldn\u2019t start until close to a year after you signed a deal to publish your book, and that alone could take years to accomplish. Now you may never have a New York Times<\/em> bestseller , but that\u2019s true regardless of how your book is published. <\/p>\n So, to sum it all up: <\/p>\n Of course, if you have any success as a self-publisher, you may not see a deal with a traditional publisher as a step forward. If you find yourself in that position, let me know, so I can spend some envying you. <\/p>\n In future posts, I will discuss the nuts and bolts of preparing your book for publication on the Kindle. I\u2019ll also go into the economics of self-publishing the print edition with CreateSpace, as well as the various steps along the way. <\/p>\n As I make the necessary steps to promote Human X<\/i> (and other books down the road), I will point out these steps and explain why I do the things I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Amazon Kindle was not the first electronic reader on the market. Sony had been marketing one for the better part of a year, but Amazon took the concept mainstream, making it the first e-reader that the average layperson could get his or her mitts upon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,25,9],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing","tag-kindle","tag-royalties","tag-self-publishing"],"yoast_head":"\n\n