# Another question of quality: self-pub.



## Caged Maiden

Okay, since we're talking about this on multiple threads, I wanted to ask you all for another take on self-published books.  Generally, I'm not interested in self-published books, have little faith in the quality, and have never desired to join that party... however good the music sounds from down the hall.

HOWEVER, those were my opinions based on admittedly little research.  

So... I decided to learn more.  I've "looked inside" about three dozen self-published books.  Usually, I get about a page in before I begin scanning rather than reading.  One book had three pages of exposition where nothing happened except a guy flipping through a book.  Another had a completely implausible event right on the first page.  Another had the word "wizard" mentioned something like three dozen times and every character was nameless and I guess I was meant to remember the multitude of wizards by hair color alone...  Another had a pretentious writing style that was cute in the opening paragraphs but wore me down quickly.  Another had misspellings/ typos/ grammar problems about every fifteen words.  Another seemed unable to differentiate between "I did" and "he did"...  None of these were anything I'd want to commit to for the course of a novel.  THIS was my real hesitancy to join the ranks of self-published authors-- people who alone deemed their books "good enough", without what I consider to be the skills necessary to really be "there".

I understand that sounds bitchy of me, and I can only apologize.  For ME... that wouldn't be good enough.  Those are silly mistakes that take only a few days to correct.  I'd have gone the extra mile.  Okay, now on to my reason for writing this post.  I then happened upon (by random clicking) this:  Amazon.com: Rainbow's End - Wizard eBook: Corrie Mitchell: Kindle Store

I hope that works.  Anyways, I opened it just as I did the others, and instead of being assaulted by rookie mistakes and straining my eyes by rolling, I was really impressed with the flow and especially short, sweet descriptions that painted wonderful images.  Okay, I was a little thrown off by the jumping scenes, but I forgave and forgot and I was pulled into the story. 

My point?  I'd be proud to stand next to this person and have my book compared to it.  It's well-written (though not without minor punctuation flaws), balanced narrative, and just plain quirky and interesting.  My question is... WHY DOES THIS BOOK HAVE 4 STARS, JUST LIKE ALL THOSE I MENTIONED ABOVE???  I'm actually offended that this book is rated exactly the same as those others were.  I'm verging on livid as I compare the way I felt reading those other introductions.  Fatigued, disinterested, conned--in some cases.  Then, this delightful little book pops up and I give it a read (though it's material I wouldn't ordinarily enjoy, a sort of chosen one story with a dark lord), and I'm smiling and feel tugged into a story I'd ordinarily reject on theme alone.  How in the world of everything that is fair and good, could anyone compare this to that pile of rubbish I just sifted through and call them ALL 4-star books?  Yes, offended is the right word.

So... while I'm glad I searched until finding something I'd be proud to self-publish, I'm totally disenchanted with the rating system.  All these books had between 11 and 23 reviews, all were 4-stars... only one was worth the time it took to open.


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## Caged Maiden

I think I forgot my original question... I meant to ask "What can we (if we intend to self-publish) do, to ensure our reputation is high and we float to the top of the (sorry) garbage heap?  How do you guys who self-publish, ensure you aren't lost in a sea of crap?  I love the idea of rating systems, but this Amazon one appears to be broken... beyond repair.  Either brain-damaged monkeys are writing those reviews or something's rotten in the state of Denmark...

I'm all for asking friends to write a favorable review, but is there no way to check stats on how many books a writer has sold?  I'd be really interested in reading a 4-star book from a writer who has sold 6000 of them.  Not so much for someone who sold 13--mostly to friends.  Okay... rant concluded.  I apologize if this material or my opinion offends anyone.  I just really respect artists who feel conscientious and wish there was a better way to promote those who turn out quality books.  They don't deserve to be the one piece of pork in a can of boring beans.  Is there a way to separate those better writers?


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## T.Allen.Smith

Caged Maiden said:


> All these books had between 11 and 23 reviews, all were 4-stars... only one was worth the time it took to open.


That's not a big enough sample size to consider any average rating. I'd say at least a couple hundred minimum.  Often, authors enlist friends and family (or service companies in the case of large numbers) to write these glowing reviews. You'll often see reviewers like this have reviewed no other books at all. They also often come from the same state.   

Reviews that make statements, for self-pubbers authors, like "The Next Tolkein" are laughable at best. I just ignore them outright & shady reviews like those are enough to keep me from purchasing the book. It makes me feel like someone is trying to swindle me.

There are sites out there that offer honorable reviews, like Goodreads. I think they write honest reviews for self-pubbed works but only publish the review with the author's consent. I believe the author actually pays for the review though...can't recall exactly. Once written, the review is property of the author. They can use it, or stick it away in a dark hole somewhere, never again to see the light of day.


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## PaulineMRoss

Amazon reviews are useless these days. Because everyone knows that you have to get a bunch of reviews to get any sales traction, a lot of self-pubbers get everyone they know to write nice reviews, then they pay for more from sites like Fiverr, at $5 a pop. The reviews on Amazon.co.uk are often a better indication, because most of the paid reviewers forget there's anywhere outside Amazon.com  Goodreads is also a better guide, because that's where the avid readers hang out, and the paid-for reviews are a much smaller proportion there. The Amazon best-sellers list has some reasonable stuff on it, too, because (obviously) they've sold enough to prove they're not complete turkeys.

I don't know what the answer is. It would be lovely to have some sort of independent quality control, someone who just reads the stuff and says: yes, that's as good as a traditionally published book. But I just don't know how it would work. I read and reviewed around 50 self-pubbed books last year, but that's a miniscule proportion of the total.

If anyone wants my best-of list for the year, here it is: 5 Self-Published Gems of 2013 | Fantasy Review Barn All of them are professional quality, and I enjoyed them.


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## AnneL

T.Allen.Smith said:


> There are sites out there that offer honorable reviews, like Goodreads. I think they write honest reviews for self-pubbed works but only publish the review with the author's consent. I believe the author actually pays for the review though...can't recall exactly. Once written, the review is property of the author. They can use it, or stick it away in a dark hole somewhere, never again to see the light of day.



There was a huge stink a while ago b/c Goodreads removed a lot of reviews that it thought were harassing to the author and out of line, and the writers of those reviews were incensed. Without going into all the mucky details, it seems that the problem was started by self-pubbed authors with no one to advise them otherwise who responded inappropiately to 1 star reviews, the reviewer then responded back, and war breaks out. Now if you get a 1 star review, Goodreads gives you a notification telling authors not to respond. 

As far as I know, the reader reviews are genuine and aren't paid for on or through Goodreads. They do have an advertising program for self-pubbed authors, but it's not paid comments in the reviews. So they are pretty accurate with a large enough sample size. (This is not to say self-pubbed auhtors don't pay people outside of GR.)


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## TWErvin2

That is the big conundrum, how to stand out from the squalor works that are self-published.

Amazon reviews are okay, and they do drive sales, as I've evidenced from my own works (I could go into detail, but that's not the point of the thread). One of the ways to determine the validity of reviews is to simply take a review you think is legitimate and then click on the reviewer's history. That and the verified purchase is some help.

What you did, Caged Maiden, is what most readers who are willing to take a chance on self-published books. They look at the sample. That's not guaranteed to help.

One thing that might help a self-published author is to get blurbs from other authors, and the more respected or good-selling, the better it will be. Most authors with any readership are hesitant to write a blurb for a book they don't think is up to snuff. But getting an author to read and offer a blurb can be a challenge.

Getting reviews on independent review blogs can help a self-published author some, but that really depends on the blog. Large and small are inundated with requests, and many of the major ones don't accept self-published books.

My 4 books currently have (in order of publication) 32, 12, 5, 25 reviews on Amazon and 8, 4, 1, 1 for review blogs (with some reviews pending). The majority of the amazon are from folks I have no clue who they are. Getting reviews is difficult. I guess I don't press family and friends to review as much as I could. I've had a few crit partners in the review my works on Amazon, or mention them on their blogs, but usually those are writers who've been published. But like PaulineMRoss said, reviews are important for a book to get traction. Readers are more suspect, and like I indicated--they look at the publication and review date (some reviews appear the same day or a day or two after release. Those are discounted by most potential readers. Verified sales, and checking history of the reviewer, those are also good clues.

The other way to tell if a self-published book is decent is the Amazon rating. Ratings (Kindle for example) between 50,000 and 100,000 means it's selling 1-2 copies a day. 25,000 to 49,000 a few more. 10,000 to 24,000 up to 10 or 12 a day, and it goes up from there.  That's a good sign of a quality book. (there are charts that can be found online that approximate sales based on ranks on Amazon).

But that is mostly for the reader to determine, and not for the self-published author to break out. On other boards, and I think there is merit to this, is for an author to get multiple titles out there. Self-publishing one novel to test the waters isn't always a good way to test the waters because of this.

I'll add another thing that can help a self-published author get noticed is a professional/well done cover, especially in fantasy.

Note: I'm published by a small press, which is somewhere between a big publishing house and self-publishing, if you ask me. It does help getting some sales and events, but the lines get further blurred as many self-published authors create their own publishing company which they publish under, which might benefit a self-published author giving it a try.


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## The Dark One

Sounds like a lot more solid arguments for my independent appraisal and rating system. 

My three books have hardly any reviews on amazon, but a handful on goodreads. I have never chased anyone to put ratings or reviews up (which is probably why I don't have many), but I'd guess I'd know about a third of the reviewers/raters. Good consistency among the raters though, with no qualitative difference between those who know me and those who don't. If anything the better reviews are from strangers as my friends are not the sort of people to get too excited about anything.


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## psychotick

Hi,

Just to throw one more iron into the fire - getting reviews is hard. Damned hard. I don't solicit them, don't approach book bloggers mostly, and I don't get family and friends to write them. On average I would guess I get one review per hundred to one hundred and fifty sales of a book. That's a very wild estimate by the way. So if say you take Maverick where I have 24 reviews that would equate to somewhere between 2,400 and 3,600 sales - which is somewhere in the ballpark. I actually don't know the true number.

However, I see other books by other authors out there with hundreds of reviews, and really terrible rankings, and each time I think to myself, did they really have tens of thousands of sales? Or is something else going on?

At the end of the day the only way to be sure of a book's quality is to "look inside". But this is no different to going to a physical bookstore and browsing.

Cheers, Greg.


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## PaulineMRoss

psychotick said:


> On average I would guess I get one review per hundred to one hundred and fifty sales of a book.



One self-pubbed author who keeps very accurate statistics reckoned she got 1 review per 187 sales, so I'd say your number is a good guess. Bear in mind also that there's a lag in reviews. Especially if a book is cheap or by an unknown author, readers can take months or even years to get round to reading it. I've got stuff on my Kindle I bought two years ago that I'm only just now posting reviews for.

Be very wary of an unknown author with a recently published book with hundreds of reviews. I once tracked this in detail for an author I was suspicious of. He published his sales figures (big mistake) so I was able to see that the bump in sales *followed* the bump in reviews. That means paid for reviews.


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## Philip Overby

I sometimes compare self-published works to local bands. When I was a teenager, I would go see local bands. Some were pretty awesome for what they had, but some were absolutely horrible. There were honestly people who thought their local band was as good as most stuff on the radio. That's fine I think. I even thought that at times. However, if you put them on the main stage opening for the Rolling Stones, most people may not like them so much. Some might of course. Not to say all traditional published work is better than self-published work, because it isn't. 

Self-pubbed works are only going to swell and swell I believe. This isn't going away. So how do we save time by not reading the really bad books out there (which IS totally subjective in my opinion)? (If Caged Maiden said she didn't like some of the books she read, I may still like them for different reasons. Not to say this would be true in every case, but it might be.)

Read samples. If the sample does nothing for you, move on. If reviews can't be trusted, I still think the best method is word of mouth or recommendations from people you trust. Any old faceless review on the internet may not be enough. Find reviewers who you trust and follow what they say. I truly think reviewers are going to be the beacon in the darkness when it comes to finding the diamonds in the rough so to speak. By reviewers, I mean people who have websites or blogs (like Pauline), not just people who review things on Amazon. 

Another way to compare is to look at Youtube. There are videos that become viral because of something that is awesome, shocking, stupid, whatever. Readers have to attempt to make self-pubbed books go viral. Anthony Ryan is a good example in the fantasy community as of late (look him up). 

I will say Dark One's idea of a service is a good one, but yeah, it's one of those things that is going to take people who have a reputation in the industry to pull it off I believe.


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## C Hollis

> One self-pubbed author who keeps very accurate statistics reckoned she got 1 review per 187 sales, so I'd say your number is a good guess.


I think my numbers were about 1 in 220.  These numbers just illustrate how hard actual reader reviews are hard to come by.  One other thing to keep in mind, if a self-pubbed author doesn't like a review, more times than not he can get Amazon to remove it for a number of reasons (even made up).  I have seen several complaints about this practice, as well as the review buying services available.



> I think they write honest reviews for self-pubbed works but only publish the review with the author's consent.


I had a review for one of my stories on Goodreads that had been there for a couple of months before I was even aware of it, so I would say author consent is not required.



> The other way to tell if a self-published book is decent is the Amazon rating. Ratings (Kindle for example) between 50,000 and 100,000 means it's selling 1-2 copies a day. 25,000 to 49,000 a few more. 10,000 to 24,000 up to 10 or 12 a day, and it goes up from there. That's a good sign of a quality book. (there are charts that can be found online that approximate sales based on ranks on Amazon).


This works, and it doesn't.  If your somewhere in the sweet spot of the the books sales, you can get an idea of its popularity at the time, but if you catch the title in the early stages of that bell curve, or at the end (say a year and a half after release), then your aren't seeing a true representation of how the book did, or is going to do.  I'm not arguing the numbers, because they are close to accurate (Amazons ranking system is about as broke as its rating system).
I will say that if a book has been out for better than a year and it still ranks in the top 100,000, then the author is doing something right, but that still doesn't mean the title is great.  I picked up one that was very well ranked, (I believe it was like 15,000 something) and it was so bad I was tempted to hunt down the author and ask him his secret on getting such good sales.



> I meant to ask "What can we (if we intend to self-publish) do, to ensure our reputation is high and we float to the top of the (sorry) garbage heap? How do you guys who self-publish, ensure you aren't lost in a sea of crap?


I'm just taking the patience approach.  
Look, my first book was good, but it had some editing issues that would likely get some people on these boards fired up and throwing stones.  Perhaps that first book deserves to be lost in a sea of crap.  One day I will go back and fix it up, but it sold well (much better than I expected), and its life cycle is at the wrong side of the bell-curve for an author with one title.  My second title is better, but it won't sell much better than the first.  My third title will be an improvement again, and it will be the last of the series, which will drive the sales of one and two back up, since many readers wait for an entire series to come out before buying (especially with indies).  
My fourth title will be a stand-alone.  By that time (another 2 years away), I will have four titles on Amazon, and I believe my work will begin to float to the top of the cesspool.
I don't concern myself with other peoples tripe that sells well because of bogus reviews and get-rich-quick schemes (writing a new title every couple of months).  I focus on my work, and make every effort to release quality titles.  I have a strong belief that if I write quality it will eventually float to the top.

But, again, I think I've mentioned this before; I'm in no hurry.  I don't write to be rich.  I write because the characters in my head won't shut their traps.


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## Philip Overby

I'd like to add that I've met quite a few self-published authors who are actually very good. These weren't picked out of a hat randomly, but met in other writing communities and here at Mythic Scribes. One way to avoid "crap" so to speak, is seek out self-published authors on social media and such and see how they interact with others. I've found that the more engaging and interesting people tend to, lo and behold, be great writers. That's how I discovered Chuck Wendig's writing was by reading his posts on his blog. He's a hybrid author (which I aspire to be one of these days, a mix of traditional and self-published) and his posts tend to be well-written and funny. I've found his books to be the same. I know some people don't care about social media or how engaging someone is, but there are some people who care or it wouldn't be a thing that existed. You could put me in that camp. I want to support cool writers who also happen to be cool people. So when I go shopping for self-published books, I find that meeting people on forums and social media can help weed out a lot of the crap if you're perceptive.


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## T.Allen.Smith

C Hollis said:


> I had a review for one of my stories on Goodreads that had been there for a couple of months before I was even aware of it, so I would say author consent is not required.


I'm referring to a service offered by Goodreads, not reader reviews.


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## Caged Maiden

Okay, so another question, then.

If you self-publish, with no previous experience or network or fan base... how do people even see your book?


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## Devor

Caged Maiden said:


> If you self-publish, with no previous experience or network or fan base... how do people even see your book?



You have to create a network.  There's no other way.  "If you post it, they will come."  I wish it worked that way, but it doesn't.


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## psychotick

Hi Caged Maiden,

In my case they mostly don't. My sales aren't that great and I have absolutely no marketing strategy save to write more books. Still I have a few fans and bring in enough to keep the cats in style and I'm happy with that.

C. Hollis, yeah there is a facility to remove reviews for certain reasons, but Amazon is quite strict with them as I understand it. (I haven't applied to have any of the reviews on my books removed even though some of them are completely unfair - and one is more than a little disturbing.) The main reason they remove reviews is actually that the reviewer is another author. It's the main reason I don't write reviews for books. The other reason being that it looks bad - one author back slapping another. It's a lose lose for me.

Cheers, Greg.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Caged Maiden

Amanda Hocking and the 99-Cent Kindle Millionaires | Nathan Bransford, Author

... interesting... very interesting.


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## Philip Overby

There are success stories in both traditional and self-publishing honestly. Hocking even says this herself:

_I guess what I'm saying is that just because I sell a million books self-publishing, it doesn't mean everybody will. In fact, more people will sell less than 100 copies of their books self-publishing than will sell 10,000 books. I don't mean that to be mean, and just because a book doesn't sell well doesn't mean it's a bad book. It's just the nature of the business._

I could be wrong, but Hocking did this with a very strong network. I think it's good to study writers like this and see what they're doing. Don't necessarily copy it, but see what kind of genre, audience, writing style, etc. they utilize. Marketing experts can tell you what to do all day,but studying the people who are successful is one of the best ways to learn how to do something.


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## Devor

Phil the Drill said:


> I think it's good to study writers like this and see what they're doing. Don't necessarily copy it, but see what kind of genre, audience, writing style, etc. they utilize. Marketing experts can tell you what to do all day,but studying the people who are successful is one of the best ways to learn how to do something.



That's true, but there's a couple of challenges to that which shouldn't be overlooked.

For instance, if you visit an author's webpage, you see what it's like today, but not what it was like as they were growing.  You don't get to see the private messages behind the scenes that created connections and opened up doors.  And it's a pretty common phenomenon in marketing for people to have no idea or to be all wrong about what actually worked or didn't work or why.  So you will probably see some misleading or contradictory ideas.

It's important to bear those concepts in mind while you study what other authors have done if you want to come away with an objective perspective about what you should be doing yourself.


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## Chessie

I have read that Ms. Hocking did use social media to advertise her books. But what I think benefited her was that she had several books to offer when she self-published. I think she had something like 17 books written (not sure if that's how many she published), which speaks to her dedication to the craft. She kept writing.


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## ACSmyth

She also caught the crest of the wave with the free and 99c promotions, which most people agree have pretty much burned themselves out now.


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## Bansidhe

There's definitely a whole lotta noise out there, CM. I guess the question is: what would you want to get out of self-pubbing, what are you willing to put into it, and is it going to be your primary mode of being published? For instance, I'm not looking for a million reviews, or a million dollars, from self-pubbing. Instead, I'm seeking a "hybrid" path--one I believe will become more and more prevalent in the next few years, and there's definitely more than one acceptable business model. (Especially when Random House pens a deal with Author House, one of those exploit-y vanity presses every writer should be aware of). Honestly, I think a lot of it is all up in the air at this point, and the dust as yet to settle. It's an exciting time for an author, but VERY noisy and strange, kind of like the planet Kuzbane. 

Authors with extended backlists are re-editing themselves and self-pubbing when the rights revert back to them, giving their portfolio of work a fresh start in life. Others are self-pubbing a book while they shop it traditionally to agents and publishers. How I'm utilizing it, for example, is to self-pub a free series of companion pieces to the series I'm writing for my publisher, to try to reach new readers. 

My best advice to cutting through the garbage heap is to find those authors who are using the platform well. When I attended a panel with Hugh Howey, for example, he had very viable reasons for pursuing a largely self-pubbed path after spending years in the book business in various roles. He recommended a three-prong attack if self-pubbing is going to be your chosen primary route: Amazon KDP or Smashwords for ebooks (I opted for the latter, since it automatically distributes to multiple ebook platforms, not just Amazon), Createspace for print, and ACX for audio distribution.

The best thing you can do is study the paths available to you closely, and go with what's right for you--because it's a business decision on your part based on what's best for you as an author and for your books--not because something's the newest, greatest fad since sliced bread. Yes there's a lot of garbage out there--but that's just the nature of the internet, unfortunately.


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## Chessie

Awesome response, Bansidhe. Very encouraging, thank you. The hybrid route is one I'm interested in at some point in the future.


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## Kevin O. McLaughlin

I want to go back to the original posts in this thread for a second.

First, the OP said she ""looked inside" about three dozen self-published books".

Nobody else here picked up on the fatal flaw in that statement, so I'll share.

_*How did you know they were self published?*_

The reason I ask is simple: most good self published books are *indistinguishable* from any trad pub book. In other words, if you can easily tell that a book is self published, odds are that it's not very good. (Not ALWAYS the case, but odds favor obviously self published books being lower quality.)

Right now, about half of all science fiction and fantasy ebooks sold in the USA are self published. If you go to the Kindle store, and check out the top 100 bestselling in fantasy, about 50% will be self published. Most of the readers of those SP ebooks have NO idea that the books they are reading were self published. Why would they? They look just like every other book.

I spent a lot of time in 2012 and 2013 doing surveys of the SF&F genres. It was fun; but one thing I noticed: it started off pretty easy to spot most of the SP titles, and got REALLY HARD by the end of 2012. Lots of small presses were selling ebooks at "indie" price ranges, and lots of SP writers were selling ebooks at $5-8, so price was no longer a good marker. Most of the more successful indie writers had their own imprint/business name, too, so that meant I had to Google random business names and figure out which were multi-author small presses and which were self publishing small presses (publishing company owned by the author).

I'd been doing it a while, and *I* was having a tough time telling the indie books apart from the trad pub ones in many cases!

And that's because if you're doing self publishing right, the quality is such that the average reader isn't going to know.


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## Kevin O. McLaughlin

That said, there is another important factor to consider. People talk about how "80% of indies make less than $X", or "the average indie makes only $Y".

Here's another one: the average self published book makes more money than the average work submitted to traditional publishers.

(That is, of course, because almost all submissions to traditional publishers make $0, because they are not accepted.)

The OP wrote: * "What can we (if we intend to self-publish) do, to ensure our reputation is high and we float to the top of the (sorry) garbage heap? How do you guys who self-publish, ensure you aren't lost in a sea of crap?"*

There's a lot of poorly written books being published right now. Why worry about them? Readers will ignore them, and move on. I hear a lot of writers complain about how they will be found above the rising tide of slush - about how it is now so hard for a SP book to find readers, because of all the bad SP books.

Hint: every book is in the same pile. Being traditionally published isn't going to help, because they are on the same virtual shelves as the indie ebooks (and half of fiction is already being sold in ebook format, and that's growing every year as print declines). Not a lot of real marketing advantage to being trad pubbed anymore (for most writers).

So the answer then is that you become found by writing a good book, and producing it well. Same as all the other good books get found.

Ignore the slush. It's irrelevant. As Neil Gaiman says: make good art.


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## PaulineMRoss

Kevin O. McLaughlin said:


> That said, there is another important factor to consider. People talk about how "80% of indies make less than $X", or "the average indie makes only $Y".
> 
> Here's another one: the average self published book makes more money than the average work submitted to traditional publishers.



There are some interesting statistics coming out just now regarding how much money authors make (in trad, self and hybrid categories). One found that most authors (of any type) make less than $1000 a year. Here's a good round-up of recent numbers:

All About The Money: Authors, Readers, and Ebook Prices | Jami Gold, Paranormal Author

ETA: Should also say: you make some great points, especially about how difficult it is to tell which books are self-published. I also spend a lot of time trying to work that out. It really isn't obvious in many cases.


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## Philip Overby

> Not a lot of real marketing advantage to being trad pubbed anymore (for most writers).



This is a serious question as I don't know much about these kind of things (I'm learning more and more everyday), but what about having your books in print in stores or in libraries? While I do agree e-books are the way of the future, there has to be some advantage to having your book both in print and in e-book format.



> ETA: Should also say: you make some great points, especially about how difficult it is to tell which books are self-published. I also spend a lot of time trying to work that out. It really isn't obvious in many cases.



I agree that it gets harder and harder, but I think only the highest quality self-published work is hard to spot. Sadly, you can judge a book by its cover nowadays. A lot of books with bad cover art (not all of them mind you) are a good sign of what might be inside.


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## Graylorne

But there aren't all that many sp books with really bad covers any more.

Besides, I'm told many trade publishers have begun to use stock images for their covers as well, so the difference between sp and trad becomes even smaller.

About getting your book in a library or book store. I've no idea how that works in the US, but over here it's nearly impossible to get a fantasy book in a book store, unless you have something like the Wheel of Time or the Hunger Games. The others sell only online. And every book with an isbn is in the online stores. I can't imagine it being very different in the US. Go to any library and check the amount of trade published books. How many will that be?

In NL it is interesting to get your book in the libraries. US, I don't know.

I do know that I can make my sp books available for US libraries and book stores, by using an Amazon isbn instead of my own. I won't because I don't think it will make much difference.


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## PaulineMRoss

Phil the Drill said:


> This is a serious question as I don't know much about these kind of things (I'm learning more and more everyday), but what about having your books in print in stores or in libraries? While I do agree e-books are the way of the future, there has to be some advantage to having your book both in print and in e-book format.



Print distribution is virtually the ONLY big advantage that trad publishers have over self-publishers these days. Self-pubbers can have print versions of their books, it's not that hard to do, and sell them online. But only trad publishers have the distribution network to get an author's book into every bookstore in the country.

Mind you, that is less of an advantage than it used to be. Bricks and mortar bookstores are disappearing so fast it's dizzying, and although they'll never disappear altogether, it will be a modest number of small neighbourhood and airport shops rather than vast numbers of warehouse-sized outlets. Then there's the ludicrously outdated system of returns, so even if your book goes out to a bookstore, it may very well come back again later.

There are perfectly good reasons for authors to sign with traditional publishers (large or small), but it's nothing like the no-brainer it was even 5 years ago. Authors should go into it with their eyes wide open, keep themselves informed of the ever-changing landscape, and read every word in the contract very, very carefully.


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## Philip Overby

> But there aren't all that many sp books with really bad covers any more.



I've seen your covers, Graylorne and they're awesome. For your books, I couldn't tell how they were published. I still don't know, actually. 

However, I still see a great quantity of slapdash covers. Maybe we're looking in different places though, I don't know.



> Besides, I'm told many trade publishers have begun to use stock images for their covers as well, so the difference between sp and trad becomes even smaller.



Stock images aren't so bad to me if presented well. 



> About getting your book in a library or book store. I've no idea how that works in the US, but over here it's nearly impossible to get a fantasy book in a book store, unless you have something like the Wheel of Time or the Hunger Games. The others sell only online. And every book with an isbn is in the online stores. I can't imagine it being very different in the US. Go to any library and check the amount of trade published books. How many will that be?
> 
> In NL it is interesting to get your book in the libraries. US, I don't know.
> 
> I do know that I can make my sp books available for US libraries and book stores, by using an Amazon isbn instead of my own. I won't because I don't think it will make much difference.



Generally speaking, the libraries that I grew up around in Mississippi (which isn't the most sprawling urban kind of area) always had a healthy supply of fantasy books. While most of them were well-known names, there were some lesser known ones as well. University libraries would have a decent variety as well. I'm not sure how the state of things is now, because I haven't been in a library in the US since maybe 2006? So no telling.



> Print distribution is virtually the ONLY big advantage that trad publishers have over self-publishers these days. Self-pubbers can have print versions of their books, it's not that hard to do, and sell them online. But only trad publishers have the distribution network to get an author's book into every bookstore in the country.



I still think traditional is going to have the wider net. If you're published by one of the Big Six, they're going to promote you in places where a lot of eyes are. For instance, a debut writer Brian Stavely had his first book released about a week ago. I found out about it because Tor.com was putting a lot of promotional strength behind it and it was on several "books to watch in 2014" lists (which are mostly traditional published books.) I've really enjoyed the book so far, but I doubt I would have ever found it if not for the promotion and exposure behind it. 

Chuck Wendig wrote a blog post a while back saying, "why choose? Why not do both?" If I had my druthers, that's what I would do and that's what I hope. Michael J. Sullivan has made the hybrid approach sound very attractive and has noted the advantages of both traditional and self-publishing for him. 



> There are perfectly good reasons for authors to sign with traditional publishers (large or small), but it's nothing like the no-brainer it was even 5 years ago. Authors should go into it with their eyes wide open, keep themselves informed of the ever-changing landscape, and read every word in the contract very, very carefully.



I agree, as there are pitfalls and warnings that come with any kind of approach really. I think some self-published authors still go in blind just thinking if they put something out there, people will automatically buy it. I believe you get what you put in though. If you put out something sub-par, you're going to (most likely) get sub-par results.


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## Graylorne

Ah, but Brian Staveley hasn't been exactly shy about his book himself  I've been falling over the Emperor's Blades in a lot of places.

My English books are selfpublished, my Dutch books are trade.
For me, selfpublishing was a matter of choice. I already knew the other side of things and I knew it was to me an ill-fitting suit. Too slow, too much restrictions, indifferent communications, etc. Life as an author-publisher (as Chuck Wendig named it) is much more hectic, just as uncertain, but at least my own.


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## Kevin O. McLaughlin

Phil the Drill said:


> This is a serious question as I don't know much about these kind of things (I'm learning more and more everyday), but what about having your books in print in stores or in libraries? While I do agree e-books are the way of the future, there has to be some advantage to having your book both in print and in e-book format.



Sure, absolutely there is. I mean, I put all my self pub books in print, too. There are advantages to being in print even if you're NOT getting into brick and mortar retail channels.

Important to remember though: almost no traditionally published books get into major brick retail channels. Most are from small presses; most small presses can't get into chain bookstores and other chain stores. If your work is published by a company that CAN get into B&N, then you're getting some value from it, of course. But even then - you're only making maybe 50 cents or so per sale on MMP print books. It takes a LOT of fifty cent sales to make up for the 3/4 of the income the publisher takes on ebooks.

Then too, how long will your book be in those bookstores? Most fiction from major publishers lasts 1-6 months on bookstore shelves. VERY few titles stay there longer. Unless you're a writer the publisher has invested heavily in, your work isn't likely to stick around in stores very long. But it will be for sale online (mostly selling as ebook) for a long time - decades, at least. Assuming you keep writing and publishing during those years, it is almost certain that book will continue selling online, at least at a slow trickle, for all those years.

For most *career* writers, the majority of sales - and thus income - from a book is not going to come in the first three months anymore. It's going to come from the sales over time, over the course of a long writing career.

(And as a corollary, non-career writers are going to have a much tougher time selling much of anything. It's a great time to be a career-minded writer, and not such a hot time to be someone who just "wanted to write a book".)


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## Graylorne

Kevin O. McLaughlin said:


> Important to remember though: almost no traditionally published books get into major brick retail channels. Most are from small presses; most small presses can't get into chain bookstores and other chain stores. If your work is published by a company that CAN get into B&N, then you're getting some value from it, of course. But even then - you're only making maybe 50 cents or so per sale on MMP print books. It takes a LOT of fifty cent sales to make up for the 3/4 of the income the publisher takes on ebooks.



That's what I supposed. Glad to have it confirmed. So the situations of US and BL _are_ comparable.


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## BWFoster78

> want to go back to the original posts in this thread for a second.
> 
> First, the OP said she ""looked inside" about three dozen self-published books".
> 
> Nobody else here picked up on the fatal flaw in that statement, so I'll share.
> 
> How did you know they were self published?



Kevin,

The question becomes: how are readers finding books?

If I stumble across a book on Amazon or Goodreads through a recommendation, I probably won't know whether it's traditional or self published.  However, I find a lot of my reading material through blogs and by asking specifically for recommendations of good indie authors.  I also look for lists of best indie books.  In these cases, I often do have an idea if it's self published or not.


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## Kevin O. McLaughlin

As a general rule, most readers are still finding books by browsing for them. We know this, because having a book on a genre or even sub-sub-genre top 20 list has an enormous effect on sales. Getting on a genre top hundred list is big. So readers are tending to pop into the genre list of their choice and scroll through a few pages, maybe reading blurbs for anything that catches their eye, and downloading samples for anything with a good blurb.

Because about half of all the genre top hundred lists are indie, those readers are grabbing a lot of indie titles. And most of them have no idea who published the books.


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## BWFoster78

> We know this, because having a book on a genre or even sub-sub-genre top 20 list has an enormous effect on sales.



Kevin,

I thought that I had read that the bump for getting on a top 10 list was only about 10-20%.  That's not insignificant by any means, but is that considered "enormous?"  Or did I remember the actual number wrong?


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## Chessie

I usually look up the author on Wiki, or check the back of the book for publishing information. I have a running list of Indie books and authors I have tried. I think its only fair to look them up because I do really want to know who is publishing what.  I'm just weird like that.


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## Kevin O. McLaughlin

Brian, if you look at sales vs rank, the graph looks like a geometric scale. So at 10k rank, you're maybe making 500 sales a month. At 5k, maybe 1000 a month, or about 30 per day. By rank 1000, it's gone up to hundreds per day. By rank 100, it's hundreds more, maybe as many as 1000 a day. By the top couple of ranks, you're looking at 5-10k sales per day.

(Above is a bit dated, could be higher by now - but illustrative of the way it flows.)

I don't know the precise jump for placement on a given page. I've heard about people whose sales have doubled by going from rank 21 in a genre to rank 20 - just moving from one page to another - but i think that's extreme.

Getting onto a top ten list probably does very little, since Amazon defaults to 20 books per page when browsing. It's the top 20, 40, 60, etc. that counts most, i think.


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## BWFoster78

Kevin O. McLaughlin said:


> Brian, if you look at sales vs rank, the graph looks like a geometric scale. So at 10k rank, you're maybe making 500 sales a month. At 5k, maybe 1000 a month, or about 30 per day. By rank 1000, it's gone up to hundreds per day. By rank 100, it's hundreds more, maybe as many as 1000 a day. By the top couple of ranks, you're looking at 5-10k sales per day.
> 
> (Above is a bit dated, could be higher by now - but illustrative of the way it flows.)
> 
> I don't know the precise jump for placement on a given page. I've heard about people whose sales have doubled by going from rank 21 in a genre to rank 20 - just moving from one page to another - but i think that's extreme.
> 
> Getting onto a top ten list probably does very little, since Amazon defaults to 20 books per page when browsing. It's the top 20, 40, 60, etc. that counts most, i think.



Kevin,

I get that a difference in rank means a huge difference in sales.  That, however, does not prove causation.

I got from the original post that your claim was, "A jump in rank results in a huge jump in sales."

I think that the opposite is true, "A huge jump in sales results in a jump in rank."

It's been a while since I read the article and my memory is spotty on it, but my recollection was that the author related quantitatively the difference in his sales that he attributed from people buying off his category list.  The numbers he came up with weren't as high as you would imagine; I'm pretty sure it wasn't more than a 25% jump.


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## Kevin O. McLaughlin

It's a search page, Brian. While I doubt it's anywhere near as front loaded as Google's search results, it's well demonstrated that searches are HEAVILY weighted toward the first page or two of results.

A comment from David Gaughran on the subject: "All of these categories and lists are reader discovery tools. Many readers browse through these lists looking for books to buy. Placement on these lists can drive a lot of sales. For example, Let’s Get Digital was at or near the top of its “genre” list for months in both the UK and the US, which really boosted sales."


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## Steerpike

Personally, I do my own buying almost entirely through browsing, whether in the bookstore or online. I'll just go through the genre categories I'm interested in at any given time. I prefer that, though I have also at times purchased a book that hit my G+ stream when it looked really interesting.


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## BWFoster78

Kevin O. McLaughlin said:


> It's a search page, Brian. While I doubt it's anywhere near as front loaded as Google's search results, it's well demonstrated that searches are HEAVILY weighted toward the first page or two of results.
> 
> A comment from David Gaughran on the subject: "All of these categories and lists are reader discovery tools. Many readers browse through these lists looking for books to buy. Placement on these lists can drive a lot of sales. For example, Let’s Get Digital was at or near the top of its “genre” list for months in both the UK and the US, which really boosted sales."



Kevin,

I'm not disputing that being in the Top 10 for your genre boosts sales.  My question is, "How much?"


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