/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21922828]

is self publishing profitable?

[Anonymous No.21922832]

>>21922828
If I told you I knew a way to become a semi famous Arthur but you had to do something very weird. would you do it ?

[Anonymous No.21922840]

>>21922832
Arthur?

[Anonymous No.21922886]

>>21922828
Not unless you're insanely lucky (Andy Weir) or already well-established with a passionate fanbase (Steve Alten).

[Anonymous No.21922894]

>>21922828
Depends. Are you willing to write Xianxia or litrpg webnovels?

[Anonymous No.21922907]

>>21922828
Not at all. After a year's worth of work, I earned myself $5!

[Anonymous No.21922917]

>>21922907
That's $5 more than me, anon. I know the feeling of being underappreciated must suck right now but you should genuinely feel accomplished: you did something that most /lit/ users will never do.

[Anonymous No.21922921]

>>21922828

Eco's Foucault Pendulum has a passage on this. In short, no, it is not profitable.

[Anonymous No.21923895]

>>21922886
Andy Weir already had a fanbase with his webcomic

[Anonymous No.21923903]

Self publishing is not profitable.
I think the real move is some kind of content-as-service system where you make all your money on Patreon, but at that point you're really playing the social media metrics game.

[Anonymous No.21924687]

>>21922828
>pros
>you will be able to talk about your writing with others
>you will have something you may be proud of, look back on, or gain skills from
>you will learn more about yourself one way or another
>cons
>you will most likely spend a lot of time and money
>you will not get something to put into your CV
>???
>profit

[Anonymous No.21925567]

>>21922917
>>21922907
Absolutely based, boys. I have made a whopping $20 from sales of my book, including to some fine /lit/ezens that picked up a copy. I love you guys.
And you should be proud. I hear from one friend after another who wanted to write a book, plans to write a book, will one day write a book. I've already published two in teh series, and the third one should be completed this week. The fact that you have finished a novel is dope. Good for you.
Went to nightcafe to find some sweet cover art generated by an AI. Thinking pic related for one of the covers.

[Anonymous No.21925573]

>>21923895
True, and I should add that Alten really only self publishes some of his books and still maintains a good relationship with traditional publishing houses.

[Anonymous No.21925618]

>>21922828
>is this a path to be picked up by actual publishers
Yes

>is it possible to make coin
Yes, but typically by volume pennydreadful genre pulp.

[Anonymous No.21925843]

>>21922840
Dutch...

[Anonymous No.21926113]

>>21922828
I've made nearly $200 in the last three years passive income from a book I grinded out in a month and self published. A couple quotes from it also got put in a video game mod, which was a nice feeling.

I did the math and basically if you can put out 200 titles and self one copy per month of each, you'll have enough passive income to quite your job and focus on writing full time. So it's definitely feasible. That said, using the same metrics, it takes about three-four years for each book to actually pay minimum wage for your time. Its entirely a matter of time horizon. I'd say if you're in your twenties it's extremely profitable, if you're in your forties or fifties it's probably not worth it.

[Anonymous No.21926157]

>>21922828
That depends on your advertising campaign and social media presence.

You are basically going to have to generate buzz as well as advertise on your own to have any chance of potential customers knowing that your book exists.
Otherwise you probably won't make shit unless you spam out shit to fuck with the platform. Like those scammers who make hundreds of coloring books a year by stealing content or farming out most of the actual work to fiver.

But if you actually write real books that take a effort then you can't just spam the system, so you will need to advertise and build a following yourself rather than hope a miracle happens.

The hard part isn't over yet. You still have more work to do.

[Anonymous No.21926160]

>>21925567
people who dream of publishing are generally dreaming of the accomplishment of achieving societal and professional recognition in the form of a real publishing deal, not typing up some manuscript that nobody will ever look at and dumping it on Amazon.

[Voluntary Fool No.21926184]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gT68xeDMM

[Anonymous No.21926308]

You can make money if you write to market, but that means you won’t write what you want and the artistry is non-existent. I made $20 in a week off a short romance novel just to test it out. I don’t want to write romance so I took it down, but I bought beer with the money. Sweetest beer I ever drank.

[Anonymous No.21926322]

>>21926308
You can write to market with artistry.
The challenge of restrictions tend to produce better art than total freedom.

[Anonymous No.21926375]

>>21926322
Give an example

[Anonymous No.21926380]

>>21926322
Writing to market and self-publishing means you are bound by what readers expect. If you over-step those bounds, there are ten self-pubbed authors who are willing to take your place. You engage in artistry at your own disadvantage. And you must write fairly fast to keep up with the market, less time to work on artistry; but who are we kidding here, writing to market is genre pulp writing. That’s not art.

[Anonymous No.21926382]

>>21922886
it pisses me off every time. andy queries dozens and dozens of fucking agents, gets the door slammed in his face. goes it on his own, massive hit. what the fuck are agents doing? they can't tell a good book if one walks up and slaps them in the face. none of us have any hope.

find the jewiest jew in nyc and offer to suck his penis. work your way up from there sucking the penis of other jews he recommends to you. eventually one of those jews will be a literary agent and will publish you.

[Anonymous No.21926396]

>>21926375
Literally anyone who writes using a formula dictated by someone other than themselves.

Hell Shakespeare can be held as a example.

Or all script writers.

Or all people who write for particular publications that have strict "guidelines" on what they will and won't publish.

[Anonymous No.21926398]

>>21926308
i dont get the romance genre. there are literally tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of these fucking ballgown romances. who the fuck can read that many and why are more still being written? no one can read 100,000 books. no one. i dont' care how horny that middle aged woman is. it should be a saturated market, they should have a lifetime's supply of existing romance books already available, but it keeps grinding out more.

[Anonymous No.21926405]

>>21926382
Most agents and publishers are overwhelming female now. They don't have dicks to suck.

[Anonymous No.21926412]

>>21926398
There's a constant demand for a combination of novelty and familiarity.
So something that follows the tropes but the window dressing is shiny, new, and trendy.

[Anonymous No.21926415]

>>21926405
This is true. I have friends in that world. It's all Jewish girls fresh out of college. You aren't getting anywhere. They aren't as "woke" as you think, it's a bit snootier than that, they have the good sense to look down on the most recent woke shit as pandering. But it's by uplifting really cringe late 90s and early 00s stuff as the "real thing" instead, and usually conceding half the ground to the woke shit in the process anyway.

You aren't getting anywhere with these people. The industry is totally captured and these people are very eager and willing footsoldiers of a culture that does not want anything other than this shit getting through.

[Anonymous No.21926500]

>>21926398
Romance genre is the second biggest segment in the industry, averaging 1.4 billion or so sales a year. And I’d argue that this is likely only sales reported by pro publishers. As book buyers are mostly women these days, this segment will only grow. Women like their comfort foods and romance is the equivalent of that. I make no value judgements about that one way or the other. I only say that it’s a huge market and writing to market in that segment works. But not if you’re going to be an artsy dipshit like that other anon. That’s not why women read it.

[Anonymous No.21926741]

>>21926398
Literally the most successful traditionally published (and currently alive) author in the English language is a romance author (Danielle Steel). If you know how to pander to that market you can make bank.

[Anonymous No.21926849]

>>21926500
What's the first biggest segment?
YA?

[Anonymous No.21926869]

i dont know why do retards insist on profiting from writing
its not impossible, just like nailing a thousand nails with a screwdriver isnt technically impossible
its just fucking retarded

listen retards, this is an already solved question
we know how being profitable works
if you want profits, you are supposed to produce microchips, pharmaceuticals, algorithms, triple bypass heart surgeries or jet engines
this is profitable
writing isnt
every other fucking retard wants to be an (f)artist meanwhile we already have more art than we can consume, its a hyper oversaturated market and profitability is all about the market

>tl;dr
get a job, kid

[Anonymous No.21926871]

>>21926849
Children book

[Anonymous No.21926890]

>>21926871
Oh...I could write those.

Just need to work on my visual art a little and figure out what advertising strategy works for that market.

[Anonymous No.21926914]

>>21922828
There are only two ways that it can be profitable.

1. If you already have a big audience you can shill your book to like Daniel Greene.

2. If you get extremely lucky like Evan Winter.

If neither of those applies to you, don't bother.

[Anonymous No.21926926]

>>21926914
There is also high volume publishing, aka moden pulp.
And gaming the algorithm metrics of online book platforms.
Also just spending a lot of time, effort, and money on advertising while putting out consistent content.

Regardless, a audience isn't just going to fall into your lap, especially as a self publisher. You have to work for it, which is more of a full time job than the actual writing.

[Anonymous No.21926973]

>>21926849
You know what, I may have been wrong, romance may be number one. It really is a big genre.

[Anonymous No.21927002]

>>21926973
But it doesn't have "industrial" buyers like youth books have. Though that only really applies to traditionally published work.
I don't think the market is as big for self published youth books even if that segment has the most overall sells.
Youths generally get their books through layers of middle men and gatekeepers. They don't buy books directly from authors themselves.

Libraries, school boards, and parents groups aren't really going to go out of their way to buy hundreds of copies of some independent self published book from some random dude like they will of something put out and pre-approved by a major publishing house.

[Anonymous No.21928125]

>>21926869
if profit was removed from writing, most of the lowest quality books would disappear. it would improve the industry. all those low effort schlock books pumped out in a week to milk cash from retards? they'd all vanish. same with things like celebrity ghostwritten biographies and orange man bad rags.

[Anonymous No.21928485]

>>21926405
>female
>They don't have dicks to suck.
think i just figured out why you can't get published, chud

[Anonymous No.21928713]

>>21928125
If profit was removed from writing writers both good and bad would move on to other industries and books as a industry would die.

Do you really think good writters just write for themselves and don't care if they have no audience or gain any compensation for their craft?

[Anonymous No.21928720]

>>21928485
Why did you bother posting that?
You don't believe it, and it wasn't funny.
I don't see the point.

[Anonymous No.21928736]

>>21928720
tired after eating too much. killing time waiting for food to go down. i must make this everybody's problem.

[Anonymous No.21928746]

>>21928713
>Do you really think good writters just write for themselves
Yes. You're nothing but an intellectually bereft, soulless prostitute. Don't project your immorality upon others.

[Anonymous No.21929626]

>>21928746
>If you need to work for a living you're immoral
Epic take bro

[Anonymous No.21929760]

>>21928713
Yes. YES.
You are a stooge.

[Anonymous No.21929771]

>>21928746
>>21929760
>No argument
>Only insults

Humans don't work without incentives. Even animals require incentives to do much of anything.
Writers aren't magical beings that don't require any sort of incentive nor are they beings bereft of physical needs.

Or do you think the value of writing so low that it shouldn't be compensated?

[Anonymous No.21929806]

I think this chart is sort of bullshit in the sense that someone who makes $1 is in the same group as someone who makes $4,999 dollars.

[Anonymous No.21929810]

>>21929771
Sure, writers can get paid for their work, and people can write to the market to make money.
It doesn't change the fact that art cannot exist in its purest form when touched by either money or politics.
>hur dur all art is political
That is not what I mean by this.

[Anonymous No.21929867]

>>21929806
Hybrid chads are killing it desu

[Anonymous No.21929870]

>>21929810
>Art is some airy fairy magical bullshit thing because I say so
How about you actually prove it rather than thinking I am going to take the opinions of some random anon as unquestionable holy gospel.

[Anonymous No.21929878]

>>21929806
How is hybrid defined in that chart?

[Anonymous No.21929890]

>>21929878
people who both self published and traditionally published.
>>21929867
Of course they'd be doing better, because traditional publishers only pick up wildly successful self published books like 50 Shades of Grey and The Martian.

[Anonymous No.21929911]

>>21929890
Self publishing Chads have much better margins as well. Becoming undeniably successful self publishing, publishing a traditional book to secure your legacy/legitimize yourself, then going back to self publishing for that extra $$$ is probably the ideal route in this day and age.

[Anonymous No.21931054]

>>21922828
No, and neither is orthodox publishing. Pick your poison.

[Anonymous No.21931081]

>>21929806
>Those poor bastards who got traditionally published but never made a single dollar
How does that even happen? Even if they didn't sell a single book, aren't they at least supposed to get an advance from the publishing company? Or is this only counting royalties?

[Anonymous No.21931268]

>>21922828
It's like day trading but even more brutal. I'd be surprised if even 1% of self-published authors saw any profits.
In addition, having an active twitter account where you constantly shill yourself ("aspiring author" in the bio, jump on every writing or even art related trend that pops up, respectfully follow the party line on everything) is pretty much a must.

[Anonymous No.21931360]

>>21929890
>Good self published books get picked up by traditional publishers
So basically self publishing makes more money at every level