I did some reading and investigation on the financials of publishing; I always want to see how a business works.
What I found startled me and I thought I had a good idea how the numbers played out. An author published through a small press that sells 100,000 ebooks at 99 cents, earns an annual salary of $12,000.
To earn $40,000 per year, that author would have to sell 333,333 books per year. According to a 2011 Wall Street Journal article, there are only 30 self-published authors have sold over 100,000 copies of their books.
Self-publishing is almost as rigged against the author and the publishing world. Looking at a breakdown or the dollars and cents details, a 99-cent price point for independent authors, being self-published through Amazon KDP, they earn 34 cents per 99-cent book sold.
The authors put time and energy into their creations, ideas, research, outlining, drafts and then the final writing. Then there are the other associated costs to publishing a quality book, including cover artists ($125-3000), editors ($800-5000), marketing, etc.
Let’s play with some numbers, if the cover design costs of $350, and the editing job costs $1400, then divide by 34 cents, the author would have to sell 5,134 books just to break even, and that’s nearly impossible without an additional amount for advertising.
At this point in our calculation the author has received no income for actually writing the book. While keeping in mind that most self-published authors sell less than 100 copies of their ebooks.
These figures came from on article I read. But in conversations with a graphic designer I know, the numbers tick and tie in a general fashion. He has illustrated a couple of kids books and is working on a series of graphic novels.
So plan accordingly. Have your advertising and marketing plan in place early.