How Much Do Authors Make A List Of Author Salaries
To give you some real life examples of how much an author makes, and how much of a variance there is, weve compiled a detailed list of author salaries.
We aggregated a list of author salaries that cover a wide range of income possibilities, from well-known authors to those still making a name for themselves.
Before we dive in to these examples, its important to note that this is a very small representation of author salary examples. These authors are only one side of the equation, and do not represent the thousands of other authors who do not make this list.;
However, we include examples of real authors here, because many of the author salary reports that exist are simply gathered by anonymous surveys.;
Youll find a variety of author salaries in this list: from those who have achieved extreme financial success, to those who have made enough to replace the income from their full-time career, to those who are still working on earning money from their book endeavors.;
This author salary report is used to show a snapshot of the wide spectrum in income levels amongst writers and authors.
What Do Similar Books From Authors With Name Recognition Like Mine Sell For
The single best way to determine the retail price for any book is to look at comparable books:
How Much Money Does A New Author Make
This is such a common question we get here at Self-Publishing School, and its understandable. Most people think you have to be really well-known to make money as an author.
However, thats not true. All you need is the right process to increase visibility for your book on Amazon, which is what we do with our Become a Bestseller and Fiction Publishing program.
We even developed a calculator to help you see just how much you can make in profit right here.Try different price points, and different royalty rates to see for yourself!
FREE TOOL
This will help you understand how to price your book and help you calculate sales goals in order to reach an income level you really want.
Many of our students sell 2 -3 books per day through our Sell More Books program, and with many having multiple books, this number increases rapidly.
For example:
Using the example above, pricing a book at $13.99, selling 3 books a day on Amazon, an author could expect to earn a little over $750 per month before advertising costs.Price the book a little higher, the number could go up.
Sell more books, the number will go up.
Selling books as part of a series is a terrific way to stack earnings for new authors, helping them earn fulltime income writing and publishing books for a living.
Ultimately, if you want to make money as a new author, your best bet is to write often, publish often, and create series or at a minimum, multiple books.
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Check The Best Seller Rank Of The Top Books In Your Category
If you want to know whether you can compete in a category and whether there are enough potential readers, you need to know how well the books in your category sell.
You wont find any actual sales numbers on Amazon, but through their Best Seller rank you can get a decent estimate.
You can find a books Best Seller rank by scrolling down its product page. The rank will be listed under Product Details.
The higher the rank , the more copies it sells but also, the harder it will be to beat. You have to look for categories where the average best seller rank is neither too low nor too high.
Heres how it generally breaks down:
- Rankings above 1,000 will have great sales numbers, but will be very competitive.
- Rankings from 1,000 to 30,000 are less competitive, but will still have decent sales numbers.
- Rankings of 30,000 and lower are the least competitive, but will also have lower sales numbers.
As you can see, the sweet spot is in the middle. You dont want a category thats too competitive, and you dont want a category with low sales numbers.
Aim for categories where you think you can crack the top three books.
If you follow the strategies laid out in this post, you should be able to reach the top three in categories with medium competition.
And if you can get your book featured in the top three when you launch, the chances your book will be featured highly in the Hot New Releases list will skyrocket.
Thats why picking the right category is crucial.
Final Note:
The Children’s Book Author
Michelle Person is the founder of Just Like Me Presents, which focuses on creating children’s books that address the lack of diversity in children’s literature. Person has over 20 years of experience in education, from Teach for America to KIPP. Since 2017, she has self-published six books available on Amazon and other retailers. When asked if self publishing was worth it, she gave a resounding yes.
“Traditional publishing sounds great,” Person admits. “You get a big advance. Someone else is doing your promotions, and all you do is sit back and watch the money roll in. But what they don’t tell you is that the advance is a loan that you are expected to pay back; they are billing you for those promotions, and you literally have zero control over your content once you sign it over to them. With self-publishing, yes, there is more money and time on the front end, but I retain 100 percent of my profits, which means I don’t have to sell as many units to make money. And I have 100 percent control over my brand and my content.”
On average, Person spends between $1,000-$1,500 to have a 32-page children’s book illustrated and formatted. With organic marketing , she says she can recoup upfront expenses within about 90 days. With everything beyond that being profit, she says she is making a return on investment.
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Before Your Book Launch: How To Create A Rock
Your launch makes or breaks your book.
So, you shouldnt wait until the week of your launch before you start planning it.
Instead, you want to have a plan in place and have your marketing materials prepared weeks before you hit publish.
Here are a few things you should do to prepare for the launch of your book.
How To Identify A Self
Here are a few things I look for when trying to identify self-published books:
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Target Those Hungry Markets
That was my thing until I learned that it doesn’t have to be so complicated. You can break it down into simple steps to get your book optimized. But we are going to get a little bit into that in today’s secret answer.So, how many books do self published authors sell? Let’s get into the answers. The answer is at least according to some marketing experts, the answer is 250 books on average for self-published authors.Now, this is terrible news because the reality you have these huge best-sellers that are selling millions of copies. Then you have a lot of people who are just selling maybe 5 to 10 books or something. But when you average it all together, you get 250 books a year. The average money that’s being earned during the lifetime of the book of about 500 and this comes out to the average author on Amazon making about $1000 a year.
The Psychology Of Numbers
Looking at prices online, in stores, and at gas stations, we see that fractional pricingprices ending in odd numbersis prevalent. In a 1997 research report titled The Widespread Use of Odd Pricing in the Retail Sector, the authors found:
- Approximately 60% of prices in advertising material ended in the digit 9
- 30% ended in the digit 5
- 7% ended in the digit 0
- The remaining seven digits combined accounted for only slightly over 3%.
If you need more convincing that ending in 9 is a good idea, consider that Apple requires eBook prices to end in 99.
I recommend all eBook prices end in 99. You might argue paperback can be different, but the research shows which price endings customers like to see.
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Are There Minimum And/or Maximum Prices I Must Charge
Yes, and consider this a summary based on the date of this article.
Kindle eBooks
- Minimum, 35% royalty: 99 cents to $2.99, depending on file size.
- Minimum, 70% royalty: $2.99
Paperback books
- Minimum: the cost to print your book as noted on the pricing page on KDP .
- Maximum: $250
Also note that if you have an eBook published with the 70% royalty option, the paperback must be priced 25% higher than the eBook per KDP Terms and Conditions.
How Do Ebook Royalties Work
Amazon offers two ebook royalty plans: the 70% option and the 35% option. To be eligible for the 70% plan, youll need to do all of the following:
- Publish something thats not in the public domain.
- Price your ebook between $2.99 and $9.99. This price also needs to be at least 20% lower than the lowest list price for a print version.
- Pay for file delivery. This doesnt require any extra effort on your part the delivery fees are automatically deducted from your royalty payments.
Keep in mind that only books sold to customers in certain countries are eligible for the 70% plan. Additional copies sold outside those territories will go on the 35%. Dont worry, the 70%-eligible territories include all the big Anglophone markets the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in addition to several others, primarily in the EU. If you enroll in KDP Select, the list expands to include Brazil, India, Japan, and Mexico.
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How To Package Your Book Like A Bestseller
You can write the most amazing book on earth, but if you dont package it in an appealing way, few people will read it.
In this section, well cover four important steps to packaging your book:
- The title
According to bestselling author Tucker Max:
Or, to put it another way:
wontprevent
In short, its imperative you nail your title. And to do that, youll need to spend considerable time brainstorming the two components of your title: the main title and the subtitle.
Your main title should be punchy and memorable. It should hint at the books topic, and it should resonate with your audience.
Your subtitle is a bit different. You want it to clarify how your book will help your reader. So, ask yourself:
For my book, I brainstormed 50 different main titles and 25 subtitles. They werent all fantastic, but thats the point.
When brainstorming titles, write down whatever comes to mind. Then review, crossing out the options you dont like . Your favorites will remain.
To give you a glimpse of some ideas I had, here were some contenders for my main title:
- You 2.0
And these were some favorites for my subtitle:
The final title became: You 2.0: Stop Feeling Stuck, Reinvent Yourself, and Become a Brand New You Master the Art of Personal Transformation.
Editors Note:
Amazon Pays $450000 A Year To This Self
The London Book Fair lands on an unusually sunny three days in the capital. The scorching rays – rarely seen at all, let alone in April in the UK – seem at odds with a closed-off indoor book fair. But that hasnt stopped scores of page-turner enthusiasts scouring the giant exhibition centres main floor, looking for publishers to schmooze, books to buy and advice to receive.
Its the advice from authors whove made it that seems to resonate most with attendees. Seminars and workshops are scattered in between the stands – all packed with a baying audience that fire off seemingly endless questions. Theyre all trying to piece together an escape route out of the doldrums of full-time work.
One man, Mark Dawson, has a queue of wannabe writers lining up to speak to him as we sit down for an interview. Dawson is one of the self-publishing success stories that Amazon likes to wheel out when journalists like myself come knocking. But Dawsons success isnt down to simply publishing his crime-thriller series and hoping for the best.
Dawson has become an entrepreneur. With the self-publishing platform, he had no choice. The tactics he employed to promote his series arent game-changing, or even particularly clever, but the scale in which he implemented them is what made the difference.
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Rolling the dice
It had sold 50,000 copies and I was like holy shit! thats unbelievable.
Mel Sherratt
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What Should Your Expectations Be
The safest way to go into anything is with zero expectations. That sounds harsh at first but if you think about it, the only place to go is up and up is always good. This is exactly what I did when I published YD&NB.
Lets be realistic with ourselves here. If you want to make millions from a book and be on a list like the New York Times Bestsellers, then you wont be self-publishing on Amazon. That is a whole different world involving pitching to publishers who have buckets of marketing dollars and people who specialize in each part. Book tours, interviews, and a huge launch will make that happen, not a Facebook post to people you went to high school with.
I knew this so I told very few people and when I did share my plan, some laughed at the idea. But I still did it. If you read the article that I linked in the beginning, then youll know what you can do to negate some of the roadblocks I had. Even if I would have done all of these perfectly I still think that going into it thinking not a single person will buy my book is the way to go.
Why? Thats easy. Every time I get a notification someone purchased my book, I smile. It feels good to see someone going out of their way to trust me and my knowledge on a specific subject. If you self-publish on Amazon and take this same mental approach you can feel the same way.
How Important Are My Royalties
It is a fair question, since most of us expect to make a profit when selling a product. But how relevant is this for arriving at a price that customers are willing to pay? And what role should royalty or profit play in our early decision-making?
I argue that establishing a retail price for a self-published book based on profit is not a priority. There are more important considerations at the early stage. For example:
- eBook prices can change virtually any time. I talk about the timing for these changes and other considerations a little later, but with virtually no cost of sale, there are many more important considerations than profit.
- If you publish your POD book at a competitive price and the book is a success, this could justify printing in volume, which can significantly improve your profit margin. But as noted earlier, pricing higher to maximize profit at the outset may price your book out of reach of readers, thereby limiting its sales potential. Therefore, you need to be aware of profit margin but consider it in conjunction with other factors.
You need to know your potential royalty to make other decisions. But dont establish the retail price solely on your desire for profits.
For more about the cost of sales for self-published books using Amazon KDP print, IngramSpark and other online retailers, of this series.
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Get Rid Of Procrastination Once And For All
As an author, your number one goal is to succeed and get high sales out of the books that youve published on the market. But you cant achieve your focus because of these difficulties you are experiencing. Check this out to help you find self-publishing tips and get rid of procrastination once and for all.