How Many Books Will You Sell This Year?

It is not a trick question.

Whether you traditionally publish or go indie, the work of selling is yours, not your publisher’s.

Many will jump in here to argue that I don’t know what I am talking about, but the average self-published author sells between 250 and 500 copies in the book’s lifetime.

A print book may sell for $25 while your ebook may sell for $3.99, and if you depend on a distributor like Amazon you would be lucky to see 10-20% of the sale price. If you can do the math, and many authors struggle with that, lifetime sales could get you a maximum of $2,500, less marketing and advertising costs. Let’s not forget what it cost you to create the book.

This is why so many of us want to be traditionally published. But trad publishers take half of that 20% and may pass along more costs if it does any marketing at all.

This is depressing, I know. But don’t give up, yet. There is hope.

Instead of selling courses to writers to teach them how to build their brand to develop a following, instead of spamming them with false offers to promote their books on Goodreads and Amazon, why not become the solution for them and with them?

I believe in working together.

I spent my entire life finding people who had the talents I didn’t have and building with them. We can do the same here. People here have talent in a variety of skills. We could be the new model for non-traditional publishing.

I have some ideas on how it could work but I don’t want to do it alone. I don’t want to build it just for me. I want us all to build it and benefit from it together.

Some of you have registered your own business names. You may have your own imprints. Good. Some know how to build and run successful funnels. Some have sales and advertising experience. Some know merchandise and direct sales. Do you see where I am going with this?

During the pandemic we learned we could work remotely and do it quite effectively. We operated without brick and mortar. We have the connections here on Substack. All the tools exist.

I am building my publishing business to produce and selL my books. I will share what works and what doesn’t, not as a course or a paywall item, but freely. My business is 4610 Publishing.

What I envision is a more profitable model that functions a bit like trad-pub but has all the benefits of indie. Imagine not having to pay upfront to publish your book and getting a larger percentage of sales back after paying back the initial investment. You don’t have to sign up for anything now. Just follow the progress. See how it works for me. Discover how much work you will have to do to help market your books. And let me know your ideas.