{"id":2032,"date":"2014-05-20T09:53:50","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T13:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2032"},"modified":"2014-06-18T10:33:39","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T14:33:39","slug":"indie-author-book-promotion-spending-lags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2032","title":{"rendered":"Indie-Author Book Promotion Spending Lags"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"books\"<\/a>

(photo: wikimedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

A recent survey of a mix of self-published authors, reported by Dana Beth Weinberg<\/a>, suggests the extent to which individual authors are outsourcing some of the tasks that in the good ol\u2019 days, were done by their publisher. There\u2019s a range of those tasks, and some authors do a few of them on their own, and some authors engage several people to accomplish the whole shebang. Recently, some formal book-publishing \u201cteams\u201d have been developed, and they can be expensive and low-performing (see the recent update<\/a> on the class action lawsuit against Penguin-Random House\u2019s company, \u201cAuthor Solutions, Inc.,\u201d a costly team service many authors complain under-performs.)<\/p>\n

The 2014 survey was conducted by Digital Book World and Writer\u2019s Digest<\/em> and received information from almost 2,200 self-published and hybrid (both self- and traditionally-published) authors about their most recent self-publishing experience. Just under half of these authors obtained outside help. Apparently believing you can<\/em> judge a book by its cover, most often they hired a cover artist (35% percent); and 20-25% obtained help with formatting, print on demand, and copy editing. Amazingly, since book sales<\/em> is the biggest problem for self-published authors, only 11% got help with marketing and promotion!<\/p>\n

Only 112 of the 1,900 authors who reported their earnings (net or gross? article doesn\u2019t say) made $10,000 or more from this recent book, and there is a definite trend line between spending more on services and higher earnings. However, most of the authors had a median expense of $0, and earned less than $1,000 on their book. Even among the highest-earning group, only 20 percent of authors spent on marketing and promotion. Something wrong here. And it may be in part that authors feel competent to look at a book cover and say whether they think it\u2019s good or not, but not to assess a marketing campaign that isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

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