Self-Publishing Shoptalk: Costs, Payout, and Keeping Expectations Low

Good morning lovely readers and fellow writers.

We’re just a few days out from the launch of Children of Doro, and this feels as good a time as any to talk frankly about the business of self-publishing.

May 4 was a strange day for me: quiet, yet also marking the end of an era. There was no grand launch party, no cutesy “book birthday” cakes or cupcakes; I didn’t have a copy of the book on hand that I could use to stage videos online, because sending proof copies to Colombia is a no-go. (I still have to order myself a copy of my own book at full cost now, and will, when the budget allows.)

One friend congratulated me on the day of the release, and my agent offered the most generous of tweets signal-boosting my work, calling it “mindblowingly good” and a “masterpiece” that she was very glad others would have a chance to read.

Not a single fellow published writer sent me congrats—but that’s normal for self-publishing. There’s a longstanding tension in our industry between acknowledging that self-publishing (when done right) is a lot of hard work, and also treating it as something that can technically be done “at the press of a button”. Congratulations tend to be saved for folks whose work has been accepted as worthy of publication by a traditional press—any press at all, really, though in my experience as a reviewer for Strange Horizons I’ve seen small presses put out work of a quality far lower than that of many self-published volumes. (And been angry on behalf of the writers, who each deserved better editorial curation than they received.)

Still, when I say that no one congratulated me, I don’t mean to exclude the folks who retweeted my publication notice. That’s a very brave thing to do, having not read the original work—and I’m thankful to all of those folks for signal-boosting me in the way they felt most comfortable doing. I’m just trying to set the stage for other writers curious about the self-publishing process: If you want others to celebrate you, you need to generate all the hype yourself. Make it a party! Then others will want to show up and get giddy with you about your accomplishment. If you underplay your big day, no one else will view it as worth showing up for at all.

Should I have been giddier? Maybe!

But I was also feeling very, very low—a not uncommon experience for writers publishing in any corner of our industry, with mainstream presses or on their own. For some, Book Launch Day is the beginning of sinking feelings about their future in the industry, because the pre-orders weren’t where their publishers wanted them to be, and the initial reviews are middling, and it’s just starting to click that they’re barely going to hold on to their press’s good favour, maybe “earning out” the rest of their advance in months or years rather than become an A-list sensation. The term “midlist author”, or “backlist author”, can settle hard on a writer’s shoulders at this time—especially when it dawns on them that they were made this way by the publisher’s choice not to prioritize their book in the press’s advertising budget.

There are a lot of Big Feelings for most writers, in other words, when it comes to a book launch—so be gentle with your friends in the industry in the lead-up to and the come-down from their big day. Yes, it’s the culmination of a lifetime’s dream for many, but also an acute reminder that most of us won’t ever really “make it”.

As for me, earlier in the week I’d returned to work on the next novel (not including the books still forthcoming this year) to try to distract myself, but my confidence had been deeply shaken in late April, when I fell into an obsessive panic about the quality of Children of Doro and… froze up. Couldn’t finish another novella I’d been working on, which I really needed to finish because I’m not doing well financially, and could sorely have used another solid work in submissions queues going into May. But if wishes were fishes, right? It didn’t get finished and that’s simply the hard truth of it. I’ll have to finish some other stories, when the schedule allows amid novel-writing, multimedia work, and OnlySky, to gain any hope of further income sometime soon.

What held me back wasn’t “writer’s block”. It was “writer’s melancholy”: a feeling of being very, very stupid for persisting in a field that clearly has no space for me. Even now, I’m in a familiar valley of sadness—one that gripped me while writing Then Raise the Dead Man High, and Children of Doro, and which has joined me for the drafting of A Fertile Source of Ruin—and I simply need to walk through that valley, greeting all the old sighing figments in the shadows there, until I’ve made it to the other end again.

My melancholy comes from those two first books holding a lot of symbolic weight. I don’t have much in my life; I spent most of my twenties trying to find safety and security (mostly within myself, but also in my communities) while working through a body of compounding traumas extending out from a toxic childhood. I think it is still fair to say that everything about me as a person remains a mess—if a charming one on occasion. The mistakes I’ve made, the burden I’ve been, the harm caused by the mere fact of my birth, and my inability to transition through education into a stabler class of existence, capable of better supporting others in turn… all leave me with an acute sense of wastefulness that I’ve never been able to shake, no matter how much I try to lean into doing what I can where I can for folks around me. I know this isn’t unique; a lot of us are over-educated under-performers living between class strata, aching for better social integration yet not quite having the knack for it. But it is the set of circumstances that shapes my approach to writing, as it does my approach to life.

Adding to all that sadness is the knowledge that I went a step further than many to try to make space for creative practice: I leapt to a different country, a different context, to leave situations that weren’t serving me well. And that leap was hard. I underwent a significant number of hardships in the last five years—none of which is “justified” by the writing I produced, but all of which nevertheless stand as quiet, background reminders of how much pain went into each work. The sheer toll of writing what I have to date often leaves me wondering, “Was it worth it?” (Is anything?)

Suffice it to say, writing can be a lonely and estranging pursuit—even if and when you have your final product before you, out in the world to be shared with others.

Am I happy that these books exist?

Yes.

They represent so much of what I want to say about how hard and how necessary it is to pursue better, even when one is born into systems of great sorrow and injustice.

And also, I currently feel like I’ve done everything I said I wanted to do—far more than many others ever get to attempt. I’m now on the hunt, while walking through this “valley”, for a clear sense of what comes next, which might put what remains of my life to better use for everyone around me.

Moral of the story: Don’t do what ML does. Cultivate much, much more in your life than creative practice, so that you can fall back on other, better measures of yourself when all your creative output in the world comes ultimately to naught.

Publishing costs, payout, and expectations

But if you are inclined to consider self-publishing?

Well, let’s get past all that existential rot for a while, and dive into some of what I’ve learned from this latest publishing experience.

As noted in the opening graphic, I have now sold 15 copies of Children of Doro in just under its first week. 15! Hurrah!

This might seem very low to authors and readers alike, but it’s funny how much our impressions of the industry have been skewed by a few atypically successful writers.

Last year, there was a misrepresentation of the stats that disheartened many: a claim that over half of all traditionally published books don’t even sell 12 copies. This figure came out during last year’s massive anti-trust trial around the proposed merger of PRH and Simon & Schuster. However, that number seemed odd to many in the industry, and a few folks dug into the stats themselves. Bookscan analyst Kristen McLean looked at frontlist sales from top publishers during a 52-week period ending October 24, 2022, and came to a much more reassuring figure: only 15% of books in their catalogues sold fewer than 12 copies. And yet… in her survey, 66.1% still didn’t sell 1,000 copies, and 88% didn’t make the 5,000-copy cut-off needed to be considered a commercial success. Only 0.4% of books passed the 100,000-copy threshold.

It’s also important to note, especially for folks outside the industry, that these sales are taking place in markets where traditional publishers think they can “win”; they’ve already ceded ground on a range of other potential audience-shares to more cost-effective publishers like Amazon—so, there’s a huge chunk of the market not even up for consideration among the traditionally published: dominated instead by the chaos of pay-to-play independent publishing, which is based on who will buy enough ads to rise up Amazon’s search-algorithm rankings.

And this is where many indie writers fall into a huge industry trap when they seek to self-publish their beloved latest masterpiece: they pay way too much to play.

Let’s look at my book-launch budget image again. I don’t have much money, so I set $200USD as my estimated budget for this book, and only went over by $14.23. Not too shabby. Part of that budget was spent on advertising at two wonderful services, N.N. Light’s Book Heaven and Liminal Fiction. Both have been very rewarding. The former runs contests that readers are eligible for if they sign up to an author’s social media (like this newsletter!), so I’ve seen a huge uptick in BookTube and newsletter subscribers thanks to those promotion campaigns. The latter, meanwhile, is a dedicated SFF hub that supports authors by promoting their releases in weekly newsletters, and offers some terrific ad spots that I know have led to book sales.

And both are very reasonably priced for the number of active potential readers they bring to your content. I highly recommend them as alternatives to the money-sink that direct advertising with the far costlier Amazon service can be.

Another part of my book budget was spent on access to three review sites: BookSirens, BookSprout, and (through SFWA’s Indie Press program) NetGalley. This investment matters because reviews matter, but if you’re a self-published author there are very few places that will ever even consider your work for formal literary review in a proper publication. You have to put your Advance Reading Copies into as many hands as you can, and hope for kindness from at least a couple of those early readers. I’m still waiting on my bill for the NetGalley buy-in, but unless I’ve sorely missed something in the fine print, it should cost $50USD—a whole order of magnitude less than what I’d be paying if I tried to use the service outside SFWA’s help.

Lastly, I spent money on four proof copies of my paperback, because Amazon’s backend was doing something odd with the visual guidelines it offered for cover art. Although I followed the specs they’d original given me for a book at my page count, the online display consistently had my spine showing up out of bounds. So, I sent four proof copies (at proof copy pricing) to Canada, so the spines could be checked for consistency in the final product. There was no way to send them directly here instead—but at least the shipping costs were better, up north!

You’ll notice, of course, that I also didn’t spend any money on cover art (which can cost anywhere from $20 to $1,000, depending on your relationship with the cover artist), or on third-party editing. The former was possible thanks to Canva’s stock image library, and my own adequacy at book-cover development—but you should still be careful when deciding to go at this part of self-publishing alone. Most of the time, a book looks self-published because of author overconfidence in their ability to design a quality, inviting cover all on their own. And that will severely impact sales.

The latter also came at huge cost to my sanity, as I compulsively went through the volume over and over, haggling over every possible inconsistency in my design elements as much as in basic proofing. I was able to make this choice because I have an editorial background, but even then it is not advised to go at editing and layout alone. Novel-editing can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, but it can be worth it if you want a good quality product to share with the world.

Just… don’t ever expect to break even right away on your book if you do. That’s a lot of money to drop on getting your work into others’ hands, when ostensibly money should only ever be flowing to the writer in our field.

All told, then, I will have spent $214.23 USD on my book launch budget, once I’ve received and paid my NetGalley fee.

And with 15 copies sold thus far? I’ve made… $73.68. At a flat average from that number, I’ll need to sell 29 more books to start making a profit on this launch.

How does that difference happen, when I’ve priced my books at $9.99 and $14.99 for Kindle and paperback respectively? Well, because Amazon takes its share.

I’m at the upper bound of Kindle’s pricing for its Select program, which ostensibly places my book in priority catalogue consideration for the first 90 days. My slice of earnings is heavily dependent on tax law and regionality, so it can vary widely (70% to 35%) depending on the store a client uses.

As for the paperback, Amazon uses the following formula:

(Royalty rate x list price) – printing costs = royalty

For my book, the formula looks like this:

(0.60 x 14.99) - 7.11 = $1.88USD per paperback

Could I have upped the cost of my paperback? Yes, technically—but therein lies the delicate balancing act of wanting one’s work accessibly priced, while not so low that a potential reader mistakes its low cost for the piece being of equally low value.

Most traditionally published paperbacks are in the 17.99 to 21.99 range—but those books come with elements mine does not have, like author blurbs endorsing the brilliance of the work, and the clear mark of a third-party editor to guarantee quality.

I therefore went with a lower industry band—still high enough to cover print fees, and to give a sense of the work value, but not so high that it would feel like I don’t understand the quality I’m up against from traditional publishers. (Yes, I stand by the quality of the work I’ve done here—but can I expect others to take my word for it?) At this juncture, I want more folks to feel comfortable taking a wee leap, rather than appealing to a smaller subset of folks who might risk a few dollars more.

So. Now we wait and see! Will the work pick up enough copies to “earn out” over the next few weeks and months? Will I ever turn a profit on it? Who’s to say.

Another key component is, of course, the development of a back catalogue—which is what I’ve been doing by trying to publish work steadily all year. Successful indie writers will tell you that one starts to see more sales once readers can associate long term consistency with a given author’s brand. To some extent, then, the success of Children of Doro will also be contingent on the success of my next book, and my next, and my next. It’s all dreadfully, messily cumulative in this strange world of publishing.

So what next?

Well, July 4 is my current date for publishing a collection of short stories, most already previously published in other magazines and Best-Of anthologies, and together hopefully conveying a cohesive through-line for my thematic priorities as an SFF writer of over a decade.

But honestly? I’m not even thinking about that piece this month.

This month is for my next novel manuscript, which I hope to get in decent shape for my agent sometime soon, so that she can consider going to traditional markets with it, as she so valiantly and wonderfully did with Children of Doro a couple of years back.

Do I wish that I had other stories in queue right now, too, so that I could get a little profit from my one consistent money-maker in the world of fiction? Yes, absolutely.

But that’s the world of publishing for you:

Even when gripped with deeper existential crises… there’s always something more, on the day-to-day level, for any one of us in the hustle still to do.

---

Be well, be kind, and seek justice where you can.

ML

P.S. As if I didn’t already have enough on my plate, I’m also at work on making an audiobook version of Children of Doro. I’m still testing out different formats (because my book relies heavily on footnotes for its neurotic AI narrator) and deciding how much I want to stylize the final production. This much I know for sure: it will first be available in chunks on YouTube, then sold collectively as an audiobook, once I learn that whole whacky world of publishing, too. This is all… so much unpaid labour, though, so I have to stress the importance of understanding your goals going into any indie production. My efforts are done so that more people might read the book—not necessarily for me to make real money off of it. I want people to see the quality I’m capable of, and for this story—ever so dear to my heart—to find its people.

If I can manage even that, I’ll consider myself very fortunate indeed—though all the world around us be fickle, foul, and fraught with deeper worries… and though we’re all just lucky if we can count ourselves as still in the madding fray.