It's been a while since I last posted, and I'd like to say that's because I lost internet up here on my mountain. I did, but I'm not sure that's why I haven't blogged in a while. I think it's because I was mentally distancing myself from the idea of continuing as a full-time writer.
Why? Because of a job interview.
As I might have mentioned in my previous posts, this writing thing isn't a sure bet. For one, the money will probably never be as good as it could have been had I stayed on the lawyer path. Did I mention I am/was a lawyer? It's true. And a few weeks ago, just before I wrote my last blog post, I had a second interview for a job working in government relations. It was uncharacteristically short, but the questions seemed to suggest I had a good chance of getting that job. I fit the profile, or so I thought.
I haven't heard back.
I also did some political volunteer work. That was fun. I've worked in legislative politics a few times in various states and I've always enjoyed it. If I found myself with a job offer in that arena, I probably wouldn't turn it down.
After my last blog post, I started to envision my work life being primarily government/legal work and suddenly my dream of writing novels began to feel more like a hobby again.
But I still haven't heard back...
In the mean time, my sales and readership have continued climbing upward. I should have been excited about those things, because they suggested something amazing: I could actually pull off a career as a writer. I could eventually make ends meet with earnings from my novels alone!
During my last post, I promised to dive into how Amazon pays its writers. I don't see a better time than now to discuss that.
How does Amazon pay its authors?
First things first: I'm only going to discuss my own situation here. Amazon has a program with 50% royalty and a tiny advance plus contract conditions which I'm not interested in discussing today. I'm also not going to discuss traditional publishers and the various reasons why I chose not to even pursue that route. You have to save something for a future post, right?
Let's say you've published a book as I have. Great! Wasn't that fun? Now, it's time to get paid. First, choose a price for your book. I priced mine at $4.99. Now you have to get readers to notice your book... See my last post about getting readers to find your book.
Ok, so someone bought your book at $4.99. You're just one dollar away from that $6 burger you're going to eat for dinner tonight, right? Nope.
First, Amazon takes their percentage cut. You can choose from either a 70% or a 35% royalty rate, with 70% coming with a few caveats like minimum price, territory restrictions and, of course, having to pay electronic delivery costs.
After Amazon takes their cut, my $4.99 book nets me $3.44. That's actually really good compared to traditional publishing, but naturally you don't get the same advertisement resources, editing assistance and your book won't be on store shelves for people who don't read e-books. Oddly enough, traditional publishers have been less generous with these benefits in recent years, meaning they're more than willing to take a huge cut of your sales while providing less help polishing and advertising your work. Again, a topic for another day.
So, you get that $3.44 and that's your income, right? Well, no. You have to advertise, silly, otherwise that $3.44 will probably be the last $3.44 your book ever earns.
So you take out an ad on... Amazon. Sure, you could pay Facebook $5 to "promote" your Facebook post and get maybe ten people to view it. Or you could buy a billboard somewhere? (Not a joke, I'm actually considering doing this in my home town next summer to promote my series set in said hometown.)
Ads: Amazon's second cut of your delicious profits.
Amazon has a neat feature where you get the bombard people with ads for your book. You just write a header (50 characters), and a body (150), set a maximum bid price and a maximum campaign cost, plus a campaign duration, and off it goes.
Someone clicks on Amazon to buy toilet paper or a laser level, or maybe they turn on their Kindle, and then something magical happens in the background. Your ad bids for the spot against other ads, and the one with the higher bid wins. If you set your bid at $0.10, then your ad will be displayed fewer times than one with a $0.15 bid, though not 50% more often, actually more like 12% more often.
But, you don't pay every time someone sees your ad, that would be ridiculously expensive. You pay only when someone clicks on your ad. They do so knowing the price of your book, its Amazon rating, and the content of your ad. Then it's up to your book description, cover, ratings and the preview to convince them to buy it. The vast majority of people don't... at least, not on the first pass.
If you bid $0.10 per click, then you will have to make one sale per 34 clicks in order to avoid losing money on your $3.44 book. For me, I'm actually doing better than that. Yay! But it's not at all guaranteed.
Some people won't buy your book, but they might borrow it Netflix-style from Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program if you allow it. Amazon pays you based on how many pages those people read, an amount which changes every month based on the number of subscribers vs total pages read... and how much Amazon thinks they should keep that month. It's not the most transparent process, but it's hard to complain when you're just a little guy against a behemoth like Amazon (and, honestly, I find it fair enough). You can expect something north of half a penny per page read, which for my first novel yields about $1.70. It's half of what I get for a true purchaser (or close to the same as a $2.99 novel), but Kindle Unlimited users are an entirely separate market from à la carte readers. An Unlimited reader wouldn't have bought your book in the first place because they have their "Netflix of Books" and they're only going to get their books from there.
Kindle Unlimited users are voracious readers. For every sale, Kindle Unlimited users read 350 pages of my book (a ratio which has held constant over the last three months). At a minimum that adds $1.70 to each book sold, meaning my earnings from advertisements is actually $5.14 per book (a gross simplification, yes, but go with it).
So, my total advertising cost per sale is my average bid price times the number of clicks per sale. Subtract that from the $5.14 in earnings I receive, and you get your total earnings per book.
At $0.10: 5 clicks-$4.64, 10 clicks-$4.14... 20 clicks-$3.14... 50 clicks-$0.14
At $0.15: 5 clicks-$4.39, 10 clicks-$3.64... 20 clicks-$2.14... 50 clicks... you lose $2.36 per sale.
This... is why I'm thinking about driving Uber a few hours a week until my sales hit a few dozen a day, and why I'm still susceptible to job offers should they come my way. I know writing will probably never make me rich, but for what it's worth I'm enjoying every minute of it.
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