Author Sales Figures

A blog by Miral Sattar on the Mediashift website said, “According to the Library of Congress, the average book sells 250 copies a year and the average self-published book sells 150 copies a year. These numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt because no one database has all the data. Bookscan, Nielsen and Bowker all provide general numbers and stats with the limited numbers they track, and the sales numbers can be vastly different.”

There are other “fudging” factors as well. As every print author knows many books will be returned to the publisher unsold as “returns”. Yet they had counted as “sales” as soon as they left the publisher’s warehouse. In the past, some publishers and bookstores very deliberately have played this game. Either the publisher sends hundreds too many books out to stores to try to push a particular title up the best seller lists, or bookstores order far too many books so they can return them and not need to pay their bills.

Even authors sometimes play the game with both print and digital books, buying dozens of copies of their own book to push it up the sales charts.

But nevertheless, these figures give us something to work with. An author might receive 40% of the digital price of a book. It sells for $3.99. So she sells 250 x $1.60 = $400. Not exactly a fantastic annual income. Which is why most “full-time” authors have a very large backlist bringing them in sales, as well as continual new releases.

Another fascinating fact from Ms. Sattar’s blog was this: "According to a recent Smashwords survey, $3.99 books sell more units than any other price point (this does not include free downloads). A $3.99 price point earns authors total income that is 55% above the average compared with all price points."

But it was her final paragraph I liked best: “Regardless of the sales of the books, the important thing to remember is no pricing strategy will work if your book isn’t in its best shape. This means having a well-edited book, eye-catching cover, an error-free book and selecting the right categories for discovery.”

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

10 misused words

Language is a living thing, and the meanings of words can change over time. When computers first became popular there were endless jokes about wood chips/potato chips/computer chips.

But also often people hear a word in a sentence, think it means something, and use it incorrectly for weeks, months even years, before they learn they’d misunderstood the true meaning.

Hello Giggles has chosen ten words they consider to be misused far too often: travesty, ironic, peruse, bemused, compelled, nauseous, conversate, redundant, enormity, terrific.
Peruse, in particular, is one far too many authors get wrong.

The blog is: http://hellogiggles.com/10-words-that-youve-probably-been-misusing


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Absolutely excellent article on self-editing

Adverbs, metaphors, similes, stage direction, lost body parts, physiology, passive voice, and “said”, all in one easy to read article.
Go. Read it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-lamb/six-easy-tips-for-selfedi_b_3838124.html

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Trademark start up

Well, it appears that Apple has decided to trademark the word “Startup” in Australia.

Romance authors may remember the kerfuffle a year or so ago when a romance author writing under her own birth name was ordered by a multinational company to stop writing under that name. Even showing her birth certificate which proved it was her legal name didn’t deter them from pushing their claims that she had to change her name. Eventually The Powers That Be saw the light, but it was an interesting situation for a while.

Meanwhile I shall sit here at my computer and watch with fascination to see if it becomes forbidden to talk about startup companies, racing drivers starting up their engines, and a huge range of other possibilities.

You can read the article (with screen grabs) here:
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-brief/78013-apple-wants-to-trademark-the-word-startup-in-australia

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

But my character told me his name was X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz

Dear Editor,
I know you said character names should be chosen that the reader can relate to, but my hero woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me his name was X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz.

Dear Author,
I’m sorry, but X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz is going to make your reader give up, or question my sanity in not getting you to change his name. Or possibly both. Please ask him to tell you a nice short, easily pronounced nickname he’d like to be called in the story.

Dear Editor,
X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz hates nicknames and X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz isn’t all that hard to pronounce. My readers are intelligent people who’ll cope just fine with his name. By the way, I’ve decided to change the heroine’s name from Cherry Blossom, to PalePinkBudsofSummerCherryBlossom. Isn’t that a pretty name?

Dear Author,
Perhaps I haven’t explained myself clearly enough as yet. Readers want to dive into your story and read it. They want to share the adventures of the characters, fully immersed in their lives, lost in the fantasy and romance of your book. Really, dear author, you don’t want them stopping every few sentences to think, “What’s his name again? Why didn’t she just call him X?” or even worse, “What was the author drinking when she named these characters?” Your main aim is to draw the reader into your world and keep them there fully engrossed in the story until they hit the final line of your book.
How about we introduce your characters as X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz and PalePinkBudsofSummerCherryBlossom and just call them X and Cherry after that?

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com
Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Time to Laugh