Finding Indie Opportunity on The Kindle
Readers expect Kindle books to be much cheaper than dead-tree books (because they know it costs less to publish them and they can't share them and worry they won't have them forever).
Emphasis added by me.
It's unfortunate that Gilmer doesn't provide solid numbers besides stating "The low hundreds per day" in a Comment. Someone needs to step out and provide writers with some numbers we can actually digest. This is especially the case when it comes to money actually earned. The confiscatory/ upside-down money split that Amazon "offers" is a step backward to the old pulp magazine days.
In the glass towers of the dying dinosaurs of print, some of them are probably laughing at the sales figures and running guesstimates of money earned.
I've got news for those people: That's still money you didn't collect.
And if race-to-the-bottom pricing is going to be expected, then all of you in New York City (and elsewhere) had better start envisioning other careers for yourselves -- because what you bring to the table is something that writers can contract out on their own.
Every writer you drop will become your direct competitor.
There are more of us out here than you.
And we know how to use the Internet.
Posts
2 comments:
I'm looking for the numbers too. Particularly ones which can quantify the perceptions of readers (especially those outside of the publishing world) regarding electronic self publishing.
I'm a huge proponent of the anarchratizing of the publishing industry, however potential sales and potential abilities shifted toward writers still need some sort of sales numbers to back them up.
Sales figures, of course, would vary from writer to writer due to genre, pricing, and the inevitable Other Factors.
But if more writers who are pioneering this would go public with solid numbers, it would greatly help writers who have been dropped or rejected (though not for reasons of quality) by traditional print publishing.
It would also be a real push-back at all those who believe writers are their bitches.
Post a Comment