I’m just going to put this out there and let it settle for a bit.
I am not a multimillion-dollar romance book seller.
Didn’t see that coming, did ya? LOL
In all honesty, if I’ve sold 1000 books in my 10 years of writing full-time, I would be surprised. My royalties certainly validate the thought.
I’m writing this today to dispel a myth I hear perpetuated all too frequently about indie writers – of which I am almost exclusively one these days. I still have a few publishers with my books on their lists, but nothing new to or from them in the past 3 years.
I posted a Tiktok the other day about handing my 2024 receipts and expenses over to my husband to prepare our taxes and how pitiful I felt doing so. You can view it here: TAXTIME. Honestly, I am not getting rich doing this. If my husband didn’t still work outside the home I would be forced to get a job just to be able to live. Being an indie author is a money pit of a career.
If you are indie, you have to pay for your editors, cover designers, copy editors. If you don’t know how to do it, you need to pay formatters, you need to pay for ISBN numbers so you can have a copyright of your work. You need to purchase your own books from your distributor if you want to sell them at booksignings, or on your website. You need to go to said book signings and they always involve hotels/table fees/gas/food so the ROI ( return on investment) is always nil for me. Case in point: I attended a booksigning in Salem, MA in 2023. The entire cost of the signing ( hotel/sponsorship/swag/books/gas, etc) was $ 1000.00
I didn’t sell 1 book.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have $1000.00 to lose from my bank account.
As an indie you need to find your own arc readers, beta readers, influencers who will talk your book up so you can get sales. You need to do all your own marketing ( which is a full time job in itself) and pay for things like fb ads, instagram boosts or ads, etc. Again, the outlay cost is ridiculous.
Recently, I tried to get a bookbub deal, the holy grail – supposedly – of book sales. My category, contemporary romance, would clost $950 for a one day ad placement in their daily newsletter. My book was marked at .99cents. I would have needed to sell 2714 books at .35 cents royalties a piece ( the Amazon split) to break even. Remember when i said I don’t think I’ve sold a 1000 books total in my career? Yeah, wasn’t gonna happen.
BTW, Bookbub rejected me ad. Saved me that $950 I didn’t have anyway.
The next time you buy an indie book from an author remember these points.
The next time you pirate a book from an indie book, remember these points ( and do a little soul searching on why you are basically stealing from the author)
The next time you read an indie book from a library, remember these points.
The next time you read an ARC from an indie author, remember these points and that the author is giving you something for free when she probably can’t afford to, just so she can – hopefully – get a review. and some word of mouth traction.
The life on an indie author is not all yachts and fabulous parties and hobnobbing with celebs.
It isn’t even fun a lot of the time.
But we do it because we love the art of writing and the stories we tell and we hope other people love what we write as well.
We certainly don’t do it to get rich.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 