New Book, Day 8

Sometimes I need to remind myself as to why I now publish my own books. I received in the mail today my statement from my publisher, a solid, mid-sized company. On this particular book, I make about a dollar for each one sold. On a good day.

When I sell my own books, I make about $8.

Sure there's the argument that a traditional publisher would sell more copies because they are in bookstores. Sounds good in theory, but not based in my fact. I have sold more copies of my book than all three of the books I wrote for that traditional publisher combined.

How? I market my book. Ten Speed Press never marketed those other three in any meaningful way. I do lots of free marketing.

So, on Day 8 of the second edition of my latest book, I have been working on the database and that is going well. I received a question about why I would want to create a database. Simple. Once you have one, it makes it very easy to produce multiple products. Right off the bat, it will help me create two books and a number of digital products.

Comments

[Tahlia]

This is good to hear. Self publishing is getting stronger I think. I think that the more that trad publishers are reticent to publish any book that's a bit different, the better the profile of self published books become.

[Tom Nixon]

Hi Talia,

I agree. While some self-published books are not very good, they are getting better. This is particularly true in my niche of non-fiction reference.