INDIE AUTHORS, PLEASE SEND ME YOUR DATA!

Everything is kept totally anonymous—I don’t even save names in my own files.

What I need for each title you’ve self-e-published is:

-Whether you’ve reported this title to me before

-Whether it’s a backlist (reprint) or new/ original title

-E-book release date

-Genre/subgenre

-Price (non-discounted)

-Lowest discounted price/for how long

-Total number of titles CURRENTLY available under this pen name (traditional & indie)

-Earnings to date for Kindle:

-for B&N:      (feel free to break down further by vendor, especially for significant sales)

-Total earnings to date:   (if you can only give me one figure, please give me this one!)

-Have you previously print published under this pen name?

-Number of months this title has been available

-Title acronym (first letter of each word in title)

Oh, and please feel free to forward the above to any and all indie authors you know! The more the merrier!

And now:

July 2012 Indie Earnings Report

I have enough extra data now to justify updating the initial Indie Earnings Report I did back in December, even though the numbers have changed a lot less than I expected over the past seven months. Looking at the data, one big reason is that nearly all of the new data came from new respondents, while very little was updated earnings from the authors who responded the first time around. PLEASE send me updated earnings figures! (See above)

That said, I now have data on a total of 151 titles, 66 of which are backlist/reprint and 85 of which are new, original titles. At this point, the average amount of time a title has been available as a self-published e-book is 7.8 months for backlist and 7 months for original, which is nearly unchanged from the December average. (Obviously, all or nearly all of the books reported last time are still available, but since I don’t have updated earnings for 95% of those, the earnings figures still apply to roughly the same amount of time available. (See above.)

The average non-discounted price is now $3.22 for backlist and $2.82 for original titles, showing a bit more separation than before. (See below for my original December report.) Authors seem to have realized the value of “sales,” since at this point 31% of original and 35% backlist titles have been either free or discounted at some point, substantially more than last time around, especially for backlist.

While I said there hadn’t been a lot of change since my first report, earnings have increased somewhat, even for roughly the same number of months of availability. My current data shows average earnings of $8,200 for backlist titles with a median of $5,400 and an average of $12,750 for original titles with a median of $6,000. Again, this is for an average of 7.8 and 7 months’ availability, respectively. Especially notable is the increase in median earnings, since that controls somewhat for outliers that can skew the average figures. (In December, the median earnings were about $4K for backlist and $5K for original titles, so both increased by about a thousand dollars.) The range is still about the same as before, as no new respondents topped that high of $140,000 total earnings reported last time, but earnings in the five figure range seem to be much more common now. As before, these earnings are across all channels, and Amazon sales still dominate, though several authors this time around reported Apple sales increasing, and in a few cases at least equaling Amazon earnings.

I’m still seeing little evidence that previous traditional publication noticeably increases earnings on new, original titles. At this point, 29 out of 85 original titles (34%) were put up by previously (print) published authors, compared to 11 of 49 (22%) last time around.

In a future report I hope to break out the numbers more thoroughly by categories (genre, price, whether or not a book has been discounted, how many other titles an author has available, etc.) For now, just scrutinizing the data I have, I can say that the MOST influential parameter, as one might expect, is how long a book has been available, as they tend to keep earning over time. (There are exceptions even here, especially if a new book has been part of a special promotion, like Nook First.) The second most influential parameter at this moment appears to be how many total titles an author has available. Promotional pricing (sales), even going free briefly, has less influence on total earnings than I’d have expected, though a few authors have reported that putting one book free has increased sales of their other books, especially if it’s a series. (That’s a parameter I probably should have been tracking from the start, I now realize: whether or not a book is part of a connected series. Ah, well, maybe next time.)

Again, please feel free to post questions about this survey on the “Money Talk” page and I’ll do my best to answer without compromising respondents anonymity. And please, please, please keep sending me data! (See top.)

….

Preliminary Indie Earnings Report (December 2011)

Okay, I’ve finally got some numbers to report, though they won’t be laid out as neatly as my regular Show Me the Money survey, I’m afraid. I have to confess, if I’d realized just what a slippery beast I’d be wrestling here, I probably would never have taken on this task! But since I did, here’s my promised report, which I hope will become more useful as time passes. For now:

I have data on a total of 82 titles at the moment, 33 backlist/reprint titles and 49 original titles (meaning they’ve only ever been self e-published). The average amount of time a title has been available as an e-book: 7.7 months for backlist, 6 months for original titles. (The longest was 16 months, the shortest 1 month.) This obviously means this survey is in its infancy and that these are VERY preliminary numbers! Please keep that in mind as you look at the rest of this, and emphasize it when you talk about it to others.

The average price people are charging (non-discounted) is: $2.93 for backlist, $3.02 for original. (Let’s just call it “about $3.”) As for discounting, 28% of original titles reported have been discounted, anywhere from a dollar off to free, for periods from a few days to a few months. For backlist, 18% of titles have been discounted at some point.

Now, what everyone’s really interested in: actual earnings.

For backlist, the average total amount earned over a book’s e-lifetime to date is $7,915. The median earned is $4,134. (Keep in mind the average length of time these books have been available is only 7.7 months!)

For original works, available an average of 6 months, total earnings to date average $12,548 with a median of $5,150.

These earnings per title range from just a few dollars to a current maximum of nearly $140,000. (Obviously, these figures are changing daily as more books sell. I emphasize again that this is merely a snapshot, taken very early in the game!) These earnings are across ALL channels, to include Amazon Kindle, B&N, Smashwords (including all channels supplied by Smashwords) and other, lesser-known (so far) vendors. I had hoped to break earnings down by vendor, but while Amazon is clearly the top seller for most (not all!) authors, the figures weren’t complete enough to allow me to do that. Many respondents only listed a total figure and quite a few others only gave me total earnings for all of their titles combined, forcing me to average their figures. A few respondents made a point of telling me that the majority of their sales came from an unexpected source (Apple in one or two cases, AllRomance eBooks in another), and for a handful of authors, B&N sales far surpassed Amazon earnings. No one was able to speculate on reasons, however, and I won’t even attempt to do so.

In case you’re curious, only 11 out of 49 original titles were put up by previously published authors, and earnings don’t appear to be significantly better (or worse) based on prior traditional publication. In fact, the single highest-earning title reported to me was an indie original by a previously unpublished writer with no other books available to date.

I had also hoped to group earnings by genre, and still hope that I’ll be able to do that in the future, but for now, the titles are spread across too many genres to make that doable (or useful). Genres respresented (backlist and original) include Contemporary Romance, Historical Romance, Romantic Suspense, Mystery (of various types, including Historical), Young Adult (again, various types), Thriller, Women’s Fiction, Erotica, Romantic Comedy and Paranormal Romance of various types. I’ve put all the info I was given on my spreadsheet in hopes that eventually I will have enough data to break things down further, making this survey more useful.

Feel free to post questions about this survey on the “Money Talk” page and I’ll do my best to answer (without compromising respondents anonymity, of course). And keep sending me data! (see below) I hope to update this survey periodically just as I do the other one, making it more and more representative and useful as time goes on.