I'd rather be read than rich!

When Amazon's top sellers are the cheapest e-books even the main-stream publishers are taking notes.

Consider that with Amazon if you sell an e-book through them at $2.99 you get $2.00

At $0.99 you get 35 cents.

If a top seller sells 75,000 copies a month at $2.99 and 3780,000 copies at $0.99 he makes a comparable income of over $128,000 a month (less tax) the key difference is that at $2.99 he makes that by only selling 75,000 copies, and at $0.99 he sells over 370,000

All writers will tell you they would rather have readers than income. Most of my published work never earns me a dime - but a recent check on BrokenSea's Doctor Who series download stats shows we have over 2000 downloads a week. Not bad for minimal promotion on our part.

My self-published books this year are going to be sold for $0.99 cents. That's a couple years worth of work for each of them and I value it at a lot more - but I have a job. I don't need to sell books to eat or pay rent.

I'd rather be read than rich!

To Publish or to Be Published

That is the question.

I'm facing an intriguing dilemma. I've been reading a lot of differing points of view and considering the opinions of many.

Self-Publishing evangelists like Joe Konrath do the hard sell on how to self-publish and be successful at it. But he also doesn't mention the fact that he did very well through traditional publishing before switching to the self-publishing model that he now espouses.

Joe's interview with Barry Eisler - who turned down a $500,000 contract with his publisher to self-publish is held up as a wonderful example of the truth of self-publishing. What this doesn't mention is that Barry made enough money writing books through traditional publishers for them to offer him $500,000 for his next book. Nice that he could afford to spurn that.

Consider that the publishing house spent a lot of money creating the Eisler brand - his jumping ship and going self-publishing is not as gloriously rebellious as he makes out.

So if I work hard and fluke getting an agent, who flukes getting a publishing contract and they all take their big slice of whatever retail price they set for Tankbread and i get about 14% of that at the end but they pay for everything.

Or I can self-publish.
ISBN numbers are around $250 Australian (closest to NZ$)
Formatting and producing an ebook or a POD through a service like Lulu is either free or next to nothing.
Cover art is coming courtesy of Billy Tackett and I'm paying for that.
The rest is begged and bartered. Editing, proof-reading, marketing etc.

Writing the book is easy - like getting accidentally pregnant - but once the book is "born" you have to raise it - just like a child and that takes a lot of time, patience and energy.

Problem #2: Your editor is a worse writer than you are.

Someone edited Twilight

I am a fan of Reasoning With Vampires – the blog that analyses the publishing equivalent of Godzilla – that is the Twilight saga.

The posts pointing out just how awful Bella and her sparkly pals are secondary in importance to the analysis of why the writing (and editing) of these novels is just so bad.

Twilight is a great example of filling a market with shit – because people will buy it because they don’t care that it is shit.

As a writer I study Dana's blog because it tells me why I should structure my sentences in a certain way. Why I should use punctuation in a certain way and why good editing is essential.

I do a lot of editing. I edit my own work (over and over again), I critique other people’s work (and have been asked to leave some critique groups because I give objective feedback not constant praise and gushy circle-jerking hugs over complete crap).

I've had some positive feedback, people who recognise that as an editor I don't know you, I don't care about you and I'm not telling you what is wrong with your story or chapter because I am an asshole. It's because I don't care about anything but the words in front of me and the story those words are trying to tell. 

A self-published author told me recently that my edit of the first chapter of his current novel project picked up things that a $1200 professional edit did not.

I start asking myself if maybe I should be offering my editorial services for a fee. 

But back to Twilight, someone was actually paid to edit those novels. They ignored the atrocious writing, punctuation abuse and other obvious faults and rubber stamped the manuscript for publication. 

Actual editing had nothing to do with the publishing process of Twilight. Marketing was the only department that had any input on that job.

Editors are essential. Finding one who is worth the fees they charge is a challenge - but no book should be published by anyone without a decent edit by an objective third party.