Jak and Daxter, the original

[Josh2Write]

Much as I hate to put it like this Josh2Write, what you've written has no monetary value at all unless someone buys it. What takes the time is finding someone who wants to buy it, and that's true no matter what route you take to publication.

As for selling services to others, success depends on the quality of the services you deliver. Publicity and advertising can help but it is often down to word of mouth - I got my most recent translation job because someone knew I spoke both languages fluently and had shown that I understood the nuances in both languages. You'll have to prove you have a good product, and you'll be up against a lot of others who wish to sell similar services.

Yes I know, and that's what I've been doing, trying to sell my stories, while also trying to help others in the hopes word will spread that I've got the imagination and the goods. I've had a lot of sabotage from people who had no right to do what they did, (some stole, some erased, some destroyed), and now it's hard to trust anyone. Doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Everyone says my ideas aren't worth anything, yet if I post anything I've written someone will take it and make a money. I want to know where they would go so I can just cut out the toxic middleman.

You said shovels, covers, editorial, and blurbs. I'm asking you where to go to do those things...

 

[pmmg]

Josh,

What you say sounds delusional. I wonder if you might need some other type of help.

Nothing stopping you from self publishing. If you have 2000 stories written, just pop them out. You will get some sales. And you will get some protections from all the things you fear. You pop out 2000 titles, even if they are all low quality, you will get some sales.

 

[Mad Swede]

Yes I know, and that's what I've been doing, trying to sell my stories, while also trying to help others in the hopes word will spread that I've got the imagination and the goods. I've had a lot of sabotage from people who had no right to do what they did, (some stole, some erased, some destroyed), and now it's hard to trust anyone. Doesn't mean I'm wrong.

But you're never going to be proven right until you sell something.

I have a publishing contract and whilst my books sell well by Swedish standards I'm never going to make a fortune. Very few writers do, most of us have other jobs or a good pension.

Everyone says my ideas aren't worth anything, yet if I post anything I've written someone will take it and make a money. I want to know where they would go so I can just cut out the toxic middleman.

This thread may help for short stories:

Where to publish a short story

and this one may help for novels:

Humour me, can anyone explain different avenues of publishing to me?

You'll find yourself sending a lot of e-mails and getting quite a few rejections. All you can do is persevere. The magazines won't steal your ideas.

You said shovels, covers, editorial, and blurbs. I'm asking you where to go to do those things...

In its simplest form you set up a website and advertise. I don't bother myself, but that's because I already have a reputation so translation (and peer reviews of academic papers) are only a small sideline for me.

 

[Josh2Write]

Josh,

What you say sounds delusional. I wonder if you might need some other type of help.

Nothing stopping you from self publishing. If you have 2000 stories written, just pop them out. You will get some sales. And you will get some protections from all the things you fear. You pop out 2000 titles, even if they are all low quality, you will get some sales.

How many books have you published? And what kind of money did you make?

Also, by "other type of help" you mean mental. Bite me. I'm frustrated, which is a normal human emotion, not delusional. The publishing system is a toxic wasteland and I'm simply trying to navigate. I ask questions and people treat me like an idiot.

 

[Josh2Write]

But you're never going to be proven right until you sell something.

I have a publishing contract and whilst my books sell well by Swedish standards I'm never going to make a fortune. Very few writers do, most of us have other jobs or a good pension.

This thread may help for short stories:

Where to publish a short story

and this one may help for novels:

Humour me, can anyone explain different avenues of publishing to me?

You'll find yourself sending a lot of e-mails and getting quite a few rejections. All you can do is persevere. The magazines won't steal your ideas.


In its simplest form you set up a website and advertise. I don't bother myself, but that's because I already have a reputation so translation (and peer reviews of academic papers) are only a small sideline for me.

All I've been doing is asking, emailing, and being rejected. I just posted a simple question about a favored video game and that has spiraled out of control.

 

[JBCrowson]

here's why you're not going to make billions from your 2,000 stories in stats:
98% of books sell under 5000 copies, which means 1960 of your books won't sell more than 5,000 copies.
average self publish books sell 250 copies
The total world fiction market for 2023 (couldn't find figures for last year) was 404 million books.
Earning $2 per book is not atypical, so if every book sold everywhere in the world for an entire year was one of yours, it still wouldn't make you a single billion, let alone billions.
Put another way, for your 2000 books to make 2 billion you would have to average 2 billion divided by 2000 = a million dollars per book (500,000 copies).

So sorry Josh, it's not going to happen, not by writing books.

As others have suggested, if you have 2,000 books written, self publish them and see how many you can sell.

 

[Incanus]

Yes, you are asking questions, but you are also making claims here.

If you have 2000 stories that are worth money, why are they not published, or sold?

Maybe after you've made your hundreds of millions, you could come back here and share with us how you did it. Until that time, I have good reason to doubt your claims.

 

[Josh2Write]

here's why you're not going to make billions from your 2,000 stories in stats:
98% of books sell under 5000 copies, which means 1960 of your books won't sell more than 5,000 copies.
average self publish books sell 250 copies
The total world fiction market for 2023 (couldn't find figures for last year) was 404 million books.
Earning $2 per book is not atypical, so if every book sold everywhere in the world for an entire year was one of yours, it still wouldn't make you a single billion, let alone billions.
Put another way, for your 2000 books to make 2 billion you would have to average 2 billion divided by 2000 = a million dollars per book (500,000 copies).

So sorry Josh, it's not going to happen, not by writing books.

As others have suggested, if you have 2,000 books written, self publish them and see how many you can sell.

If it's so low why does anyone keep publishing online? That's depressing no wonder you're all in a bad mood. So you all write...for nothing? A couple bucks every couple of months just so you can say you made it? Digital really is the start of dystopia.

I figure if Harry Potter is just Star Wars with pieces of Tolkien's original manuscripts (that she weaseled away from Lewis) and that made a billion, I'm allowed to think big too. I'm sick of living paycheck to paycheck on scraps.

And me making a billion was a joke, but apparently no one jokes anymore...
And in this wishful thinking I was also considering merchandise if a story starts selling good or becomes a movie or show, animated, toyline, but again you're all thinking with that depressing system so I guess no one is allowed to think long term anymore either...

 

[Josh2Write]

Yes, you are asking questions, but you are also making claims here.

If you have 2000 stories that are worth money, why are they not published, or sold?

Maybe after you've made your hundreds of millions, you could come back here and share with us how you did it. Until that time, I have good reason to doubt your claims.

Raised by a narcissist mom and pedo stepdad I've had a lot of setbacks, including sabotage by people I trusted, and a hellscape of things that I couldn't put into words. Nor would I ever want to.

I didn't have acces to the internet until the last couple of years, and now that I do everyone is so f*** cynical it's hard to know who to trust or where to go.

Writing is all I have left and I want to do it right and not make table scraps of money everyone else is so eager to accept when I know what I've got is worth more.

So yes, I make claim.

 

[Josh2Write]

here's why you're not going to make billions from your 2,000 stories in stats:
98% of books sell under 5000 copies, which means 1960 of your books won't sell more than 5,000 copies.
average self publish books sell 250 copies
The total world fiction market for 2023 (couldn't find figures for last year) was 404 million books.
Earning $2 per book is not atypical, so if every book sold everywhere in the world for an entire year was one of yours, it still wouldn't make you a single billion, let alone billions.
Put another way, for your 2000 books to make 2 billion you would have to average 2 billion divided by 2000 = a million dollars per book (500,000 copies).

So sorry Josh, it's not going to happen, not by writing books.

As others have suggested, if you have 2,000 books written, self publish them and see how many you can sell.

A billion was a joke (example JonTron "and then they made a billion dollars"), but I forgot no one jokes anymore so that's on me I guess. Math is chicken scratch to me, especially when I think about long term success. I don't want mediocrity, my vision is bigger than that.

 

[Genly]

Raised by a narcissist mom and pedo stepdad I've had a lot of setbacks, including sabotage by people I trusted, and a hellscape of things that I couldn't put into words. Nor would I ever want to.

I didn't have acces to the internet until the last couple of years, and now that I do everyone is so f*** cynical it's hard to know who to trust or where to go.

Writing is all I have left and I want to do it right and not make table scraps of money everyone else is so eager to accept when I know what I've got is worth more.

So yes, I make claim.

Wow, you have a sad backstory... sorry to hear about all of that.

But regarding writing: why not start here? Say you were to post a couple of pages from one of your stories under Critique Requests. No one could then actually steal the entire story because they would have to write the rest of it anyway, and also you've already done that so it would be easy to prove that your material was the original. The other advantage is that you would get some feedback on your writing. This is usually valuable. I don't think that I could have published my first short story without getting some feedback from this group.

Once you post, you could also get some ideas from the group on where to send it for publication.

 

[pmmg]

Sorry, but a sad backstory does not make a claim true. I am dubious of your claim. But it is irrelevant. If you say you have 2000 stories witten, and you are sitting on a gold mine, then hey...more power to you! I hope it all turns into a geyser of green bucks and you get sick of bathing in it.

But, if you think that is going to happen when you find the way to bypass publishing, and the way all the rest of us are doing it...Well, If I could bet, I will bet it doesn't happen.

I am sorry you have a rough backstory. But it will make little difference to your success. If you want to be a writer, you need to write things. If you want to be a successful one, you need to publish and get readers. They dont just magically appear. If you can beat the system, do tell... But I will stand by my earlier claims.

And no...there will be no biting.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I'm not talking about online publishing.

All publishing these days is online publishing.

What I mean by that is that the biggest bookstore on the planet is Amazon, which is an online store. It probable sells more books than all other bookstores combined. Most books are bought online, and even the other bookstores, like Barnes & Noble have online stores, and all the books they sell in their stores are available in the online one. So if you publish anything (either indie-published or traditionally published), it will be made available online, always.

If you mean e-books, then that's a personal choice. Traditional publishing deals for only print books exist (with smaller publishers), but for those you usually need to prove that you can sell a lot of ebooks first. If you indie-publish, then you can do whatever you want. Some people only publish physical books and do really well. Most indie authors mainly sell ebooks though. So by not publishing them, you would be limiting your income potential.

Same with short story magazines by the way. All magazines are online (because it's cheaper to publish that way, and your potential audience is everyone with an internet connection, and not just people who happen to run into your printed magazine).

If it's so low why does anyone keep publishing online? That's depressing no wonder you're all in a bad mood. So you all write...for nothing? A couple bucks every couple of months just so you can say you made it?

Actually, yes. People write and publish because they enjoy it and hopefully make a bit of money on the side. You can make a decent living writing, and many do. More than at any point in history pretty much. However, there are still not that many. But decent living here means a net income over $50k or so a year, not millions.

Like I mentioned, a great release is numbered in the tens of thousands of copies, not in the millions of copies. Which means that a single release big will earn you $50k or so. With 2 novels a year, that would get you to $100k. But that would also give you 2 bestsellers a year, which is not something that a lot of people manage.

This makes it very different from other types of entertainment by the way. A big music release will earn you ten-fold or more what a book will earn. It's relatively easy to earn millions with music compared to novels. Video games are a $100billion dollar industry, selling a few billion games per year (compared to the 400 million novels). Same with movies that can make $1 billion is sales, and so on.

The one advantage books have, is that the cost of entry is very low. You can basically publish a novel without spending any money. There is no other industry where this is possible.

For indie authors the math is slightly different, since they depend less on big releases and more on read-through and backlist. The 20 books to $50k idea is fairly common. As in, if you have 20 books, then each of them needs to earn you only $50 per week and you get to $50.000 a year. $50 per week is manageable. It's something like 3 sales of each book per day. Many achieve this by writing a 6+ book series and heavily marketing book 1 and then making money on people reading the rest.

Personally, if I would have 2.000 short stories (or short and medium length stories), I would publish 1 per day on my own website. That gives me 10 years of material (assuming I keep writing of course). I would then set up a patreon account (or similar) and direct people to my website using Facebook ads, as well as creating an author page and posting shorts etc there to get some kind of following. Every time I published something like 75.000 words worth of short stories, I would group them and publish that as a short story collection online. I would sell it for cheap, with the main aim to get people to come to my website to read more and hopefully join my patreon.

The patreon members would get extra stories, early access, exclusive content, options to name characters, request or suggest story ideas and so on, depending on what level they subscribe at.

This is not going to make you a millionair overnight, but nothing will. However, you only need 1.000 people who subscribe to your patreon at $5 a month to make a good income.

This of course does assume a certain quality in the writing. That's something I can't judge since I haven't read anything you've written. Like I mentioned, if I would have 2k short stories, this is what I would do with them. And I'm confident enough in my own writing to think that this would work. I just don't have 2000 stories lying around.

Don't bother trying to sell them all. Or at least, don't make that the main focus. Magazines and the like don't pay a lot for shorts. Like $100 at the top end or so. Which would value your 2000 stories at $200.000 at most. Assuming all would sell, which is unlikely. Again, use the magazines as a way of marketing. They're there to direct people to your website and from there your patreon, not to actually make you a lot of money.

One side note, if you are sending out all your stories to publishers and none of them are buying anything, then that could mean 1 of 3 things. Either you are sending them to the wrong places, you're packaging them wrong (bad cover letter, not following submission guidelines etc), or they're not as good as you think they are. Figure out which of these is the case, and fix it.

 

[Mad Swede]

If it's so low why does anyone keep publishing online? That's depressing no wonder you're all in a bad mood. So you all write...for nothing? A couple bucks every couple of months just so you can say you made it? Digital really is the start of dystopia.

I figure if Harry Potter is just Star Wars with pieces of Tolkien's original manuscripts (that she weaseled away from Lewis) and that made a billion, I'm allowed to think big too. I'm sick of living paycheck to paycheck on scraps.

And me making a billion was a joke, but apparently no one jokes anymore...
And in this wishful thinking I was also considering merchandise if a story starts selling good or becomes a movie or show, animated, toyline, but again you're all thinking with that depressing system so I guess no one is allowed to think long term anymore either...

Let me as a published author with a publishing contract put this in perspective.

My total sales across 4 books (3 novels and a collection of short stories) are currently approaching 95000 copies. The fourth novel is being edited and I'm writing the fifth novel as well as more short stories. My total annual royalties last year came to a bit under 2 months salary for me. On that I pay tax and social contributions (pension etc). Yes, the income from writing is a nice bonus but there is no way I'll ever earn enough to live on my writing. And I'm one of the lucky ones.

Very few of us writers get to be best selling authors like J K Rowling or the late Sir Terry Pratchett, those people are the exception not the rule. Most of us writers are like me, earning a bit on the side from our writing but holding down a full time job to pay for things like a home and car.

The question you have to ask yourself is why you want to write? I started writing for several reasons, and these days I do it because it's fun. Earning a bit of cash is just a nice bonus.

 

[Josh2Write]

Wow, you have a sad backstory... sorry to hear about all of that.

But regarding writing: why not start here? Say you were to post a couple of pages from one of your stories under Critique Requests. No one could then actually steal the entire story because they would have to write the rest of it anyway, and also you've already done that so it would be easy to prove that your material was the original. The other advantage is that you would get some feedback on your writing. This is usually valuable. I don't think that I could have published my first short story without getting some feedback from this group.

Once you post, you could also get some ideas from the group on where to send it for publication.

Thanks. But from what I've seen so far this in not a place I want any criticism from.
But I'll think about it.

Sorry, but a sad backstory does not make a claim true. I am dubious of your claim. But it is irrelevant. If you say you have 2000 stories witten, and you are sitting on a gold mine, then hey...more power to you! I hope it all turns into a geyser of green bucks and you get sick of bathing in it.

But, if you think that is going to happen when you find the way to bypass publishing, and the way all the rest of us are doing it...Well, If I could bet, I will bet it doesn't happen.

I am sorry you have a rough backstory. But it will make little difference to your success. If you want to be a writer, you need to write things. If you want to be a successful one, you need to publish and get readers. They dont just magically appear. If you can beat the system, do tell... But I will stand by my earlier claims.

And no...there will be no biting.

Yes, you are asking questions, but you are also making claims here.

If you have 2000 stories that are worth money, why are they not published, or sold?

Maybe after you've made your hundreds of millions, you could come back here and share with us how you did it. Until that time, I have good reason to doubt your

All publishing these days is online publishing.

What I mean by that is that the biggest bookstore on the planet is Amazon, which is an online store. It probable sells more books than all other bookstores combined. Most books are bought online, and even the other bookstores, like Barnes & Noble have online stores, and all the books they sell in their stores are available in the online one. So if you publish anything (either indie-published or traditionally published), it will be made available online, always.

If you mean e-books, then that's a personal choice. Traditional publishing deals for only print books exist (with smaller publishers), but for those you usually need to prove that you can sell a lot of ebooks first. If you indie-publish, then you can do whatever you want. Some people only publish physical books and do really well. Most indie authors mainly sell ebooks though. So by not publishing them, you would be limiting your income potential.

Same with short story magazines by the way. All magazines are online (because it's cheaper to publish that way, and your potential audience is everyone with an internet connection, and not just people who happen to run into your printed magazine).


Actually, yes. People write and publish because they enjoy it and hopefully make a bit of money on the side. You can make a decent living writing, and many do. More than at any point in history pretty much. However, there are still not that many. But decent living here means a net income over $50k or so a year, not millions.

Like I mentioned, a great release is numbered in the tens of thousands of copies, not in the millions of copies. Which means that a single release big will earn you $50k or so. With 2 novels a year, that would get you to $100k. But that would also give you 2 bestsellers a year, which is not something that a lot of people manage.

This makes it very different from other types of entertainment by the way. A big music release will earn you ten-fold or more what a book will earn. It's relatively easy to earn millions with music compared to novels. Video games are a $100billion dollar industry, selling a few billion games per year (compared to the 400 million novels). Same with movies that can make $1 billion is sales, and so on.

The one advantage books have, is that the cost of entry is very low. You can basically publish a novel without spending any money. There is no other industry where this is possible.

For indie authors the math is slightly different, since they depend less on big releases and more on read-through and backlist. The 20 books to $50k idea is fairly common. As in, if you have 20 books, then each of them needs to earn you only $50 per week and you get to $50.000 a year. $50 per week is manageable. It's something like 3 sales of each book per day. Many achieve this by writing a 6+ book series and heavily marketing book 1 and then making money on people reading the rest.

Personally, if I would have 2.000 short stories (or short and medium length stories), I would publish 1 per day on my own website. That gives me 10 years of material (assuming I keep writing of course). I would then set up a patreon account (or similar) and direct people to my website using Facebook ads, as well as creating an author page and posting shorts etc there to get some kind of following. Every time I published something like 75.000 words worth of short stories, I would group them and publish that as a short story collection online. I would sell it for cheap, with the main aim to get people to come to my website to read more and hopefully join my patreon.

The patreon members would get extra stories, early access, exclusive content, options to name characters, request or suggest story ideas and so on, depending on what level they subscribe at.

This is not going to make you a millionair overnight, but nothing will. However, you only need 1.000 people who subscribe to your patreon at $5 a month to make a good income.

This of course does assume a certain quality in the writing. That's something I can't judge since I haven't read anything you've written. Like I mentioned, if I would have 2k short stories, this is what I would do with them. And I'm confident enough in my own writing to think that this would work. I just don't have 2000 stories lying around.

Don't bother trying to sell them all. Or at least, don't make that the main focus. Magazines and the like don't pay a lot for shorts. Like $100 at the top end or so. Which would value your 2000 stories at $200.000 at most. Assuming all would sell, which is unlikely. Again, use the magazines as a way of marketing. They're there to direct people to your website and from there your patreon, not to actually make you a lot of money.

One side note, if you are sending out all your stories to publishers and none of them are buying anything, then that could mean 1 of 3 things. Either you are sending them to the wrong places, you're packaging them wrong (bad cover letter, not following submission guidelines etc), or they're not as good as you think they are. Figure out which of these is the case, and fix it.

Let me as a published author with a publishing contract put this in perspective.

My total sales across 4 books (3 novels and a collection of short stories) are currently approaching 95000 copies. The fourth novel is being edited and I'm writing the fifth novel as well as more short stories. My total annual royalties last year came to a bit under 2 months salary for me. On that I pay tax and social contributions (pension etc). Yes, the income from writing is a nice bonus but there is no way I'll ever earn enough to live on my writing. And I'm one of the lucky ones.

Very few of us writers get to be best selling authors like J K Rowling or the late Sir Terry Pratchett, those people are the exception not the rule. Most of us writers are like me, earning a bit on the side from our writing but holding down a full time job to pay for things like a home and car.

The question you have to ask yourself is why you want to write? I started writing for several reasons, and these days I do it because it's fun. Earning a bit of cash is just a nice bonus.

I started writing to escape reality, then with the hopes of getting out of poverty. People found out and almost all proceeded to sabotage me, which is why it's taken me so long to get to where I am. But I kept at it, clinging to the hope I would become someone. If there are exceptions to these BS rules then I will continue to aim for that as I always have. Crawl through the mud, aim for the shiny, and do not stop.

But I won't post any of my stories on here because I was new and didn't know anyone, just learning to navigate this site and made a simple observation on a game I like, wondering why poeple have stopped making things with real worth, and people lost their f*** minds. If they can't handle an observation why would I want to listen to those same people for any kind of critique or criticism on things far more important to me?

I expect criticism from my stories and ideas, which I never said are great, or even good, just that I have them, and will continue to have high hopes that they really are worth the effort, regardless of personal opinions.

And I have always welcomed constructive criticism (some of you roll your eyes so far back you hurt yourselves), but not here, not after all this.
But I don't care, because they're mine and I aspire to be more. If that mentality offends people it says far more about them.

 

[Incanus]

I sort of feel bad for Prince of Spires, who took the time and effort to explain so much about the fiction marketplace, and it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

You could try engaging with the points he made. It doesn't appear that anyone here has lost their minds. You made a claim about the worth of your stories that would essentially make you the most successful author the world has ever seen, many times over. Several of us pointed out the realistic problems with this claim, that's all.

I encourage you to look into this matter elsewhere--you will quickly see that we have not been misleading you on this point. That's totally up to you.

Myself, I'm a huge fan of constructive criticism. It is the only way to go. It is what I offer, and it is what I look for in feedback I receive. My best writer friend does that for me, and she is invaluable.

 

[pmmg]

Secretly, I am hoping he is right. That the market is a scam to get broken open. Why should they be the gatekeepers on my wealth. My ideas are worth gold, and it's not right that Amazon gets rich when I put in the work of bringing them to life. I hope he busts open wide the machine and turns it into one that serves creators, and not the middle men serving the creators. But...

 

[pmmg]

Honestly, this thread has gone way off from what its subject was and seems to have no way to recover. I think a Mod should close it.

 

[Josh2Write]

I sort of feel bad for Prince of Spires, who took the time and effort to explain so much about the fiction marketplace, and it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

You could try engaging with the points he made. It doesn't appear that anyone here has lost their minds. You made a claim about the worth of your stories that would essentially make you the most successful author the world has ever seen, many times over. Several of us pointed out the realistic problems with this claim, that's all.

I encourage you to look into this matter elsewhere--you will quickly see that we have not been misleading you on this point. That's totally up to you.

Myself, I'm a huge fan of constructive criticism. It is the only way to go. It is what I offer, and it is what I look for in feedback I receive. My best writer friend does that for me, and she is invaluable.

I heard him, but with so many just giving themselves over to Amazon because it's convenient (even after everything Bozo Bazos has said about how he no longer needs humans because he got what he set out to do: get rich using people) and now everyone is just accepting it as a way of life instead of getting paid what they're worth. That's why I don't trust the statistics and marketplace, that's why I will never "see reason".

I have big plans, so yes I claim. Doesn't mean no one else can strive for the same things. Everyone is so cynical it triggers me because after everything I've been through, to finally get to a point where I can succeed, all I ever hear is how everyone else has chosen to just roll over and take it and I need to fall in line. "Be realistic. This is how it is for everyone". Well, I refuse to accept that.

And if I really do never stop fighting and arguing for what I want, maybe I WILL be the richest, most powerful, most successful writer/content creator the world has ever seen, several times over.
Simply add that to my list of dreams...

 

[Josh2Write]

All publishing these days is online publishing.

What I mean by that is that the biggest bookstore on the planet is Amazon, which is an online store. It probable sells more books than all other bookstores combined. Most books are bought online, and even the other bookstores, like Barnes & Noble have online stores, and all the books they sell in their stores are available in the online one. So if you publish anything (either indie-published or traditionally published), it will be made available online, always.

If you mean e-books, then that's a personal choice. Traditional publishing deals for only print books exist (with smaller publishers), but for those you usually need to prove that you can sell a lot of ebooks first. If you indie-publish, then you can do whatever you want. Some people only publish physical books and do really well. Most indie authors mainly sell ebooks though. So by not publishing them, you would be limiting your income potential.

Same with short story magazines by the way. All magazines are online (because it's cheaper to publish that way, and your potential audience is everyone with an internet connection, and not just people who happen to run into your printed magazine).


Actually, yes. People write and publish because they enjoy it and hopefully make a bit of money on the side. You can make a decent living writing, and many do. More than at any point in history pretty much. However, there are still not that many. But decent living here means a net income over $50k or so a year, not millions.

Like I mentioned, a great release is numbered in the tens of thousands of copies, not in the millions of copies. Which means that a single release big will earn you $50k or so. With 2 novels a year, that would get you to $100k. But that would also give you 2 bestsellers a year, which is not something that a lot of people manage.

This makes it very different from other types of entertainment by the way. A big music release will earn you ten-fold or more what a book will earn. It's relatively easy to earn millions with music compared to novels. Video games are a $100billion dollar industry, selling a few billion games per year (compared to the 400 million novels). Same with movies that can make $1 billion is sales, and so on.

The one advantage books have, is that the cost of entry is very low. You can basically publish a novel without spending any money. There is no other industry where this is possible.

For indie authors the math is slightly different, since they depend less on big releases and more on read-through and backlist. The 20 books to $50k idea is fairly common. As in, if you have 20 books, then each of them needs to earn you only $50 per week and you get to $50.000 a year. $50 per week is manageable. It's something like 3 sales of each book per day. Many achieve this by writing a 6+ book series and heavily marketing book 1 and then making money on people reading the rest.

Personally, if I would have 2.000 short stories (or short and medium length stories), I would publish 1 per day on my own website. That gives me 10 years of material (assuming I keep writing of course). I would then set up a patreon account (or similar) and direct people to my website using Facebook ads, as well as creating an author page and posting shorts etc there to get some kind of following. Every time I published something like 75.000 words worth of short stories, I would group them and publish that as a short story collection online. I would sell it for cheap, with the main aim to get people to come to my website to read more and hopefully join my patreon.

The patreon members would get extra stories, early access, exclusive content, options to name characters, request or suggest story ideas and so on, depending on what level they subscribe at.

This is not going to make you a millionair overnight, but nothing will. However, you only need 1.000 people who subscribe to your patreon at $5 a month to make a good income.

This of course does assume a certain quality in the writing. That's something I can't judge since I haven't read anything you've written. Like I mentioned, if I would have 2k short stories, this is what I would do with them. And I'm confident enough in my own writing to think that this would work. I just don't have 2000 stories lying around.

Don't bother trying to sell them all. Or at least, don't make that the main focus. Magazines and the like don't pay a lot for shorts. Like $100 at the top end or so. Which would value your 2000 stories at $200.000 at most. Assuming all would sell, which is unlikely. Again, use the magazines as a way of marketing. They're there to direct people to your website and from there your patreon, not to actually make you a lot of money.

One side note, if you are sending out all your stories to publishers and none of them are buying anything, then that could mean 1 of 3 things. Either you are sending them to the wrong places, you're packaging them wrong (bad cover letter, not following submission guidelines etc), or they're not as good as you think they are. Figure out which of these is the case, and fix it.

Incanus is right. You have a mind for the statistics (even if I do disagree with the broken system) and I gleaned over that in my frustration. I apologize. So now after rereading back over I'm thinking what if someone like you did have access to hundreds of stories..?

I'm not posting any of my own on here, but what if I use my system and help any one of you generate some story ideas...? My brain is always moving. You like em, you keep em.

Anyone. Give me 10 random unrelated words and a genre.