Tag: Literature

If you’re a self-published author, how do you stack up?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, we want folks to read our work, but we do dream of fame and riches, right?

Now, for a splash of cold reality.

  1. Even though a lot of authors are turning to self-publishing their own books, most don’t sell many copies. The typical self-published author sells about five copies, according to one report, while another has the average at 250. I’m guessing that some really hot sellers pull the average way up over the mean, kinda like winning the lottery.
  2. Another report has the average book now selling fewer than 200 copies a year and under a thousand copies over its lifetime. At the bottom, 90 percent of self-published books sell under a hundred copies. Not a lot to crow about, is it?
  3. On the other hand, self-published books account for a $1.25 billion annual market. At Amazon, that comes to $520 million in royalties. (As a self-published author, my royalties on an ebook rival what I get for a paper edition.)
  4. At Amazon, more than 1,000 self-published authors made $100,000 a year. Well, there goes a fifth of those royalties.
  5. For many authors, one secret to success is in having a lineup of titles rather than relying on just one. In that light, the average self-published author makes $1,000 a year in royalties, according to one account.
  6. But, back to the mean, a third of self-published authors make less than $500 a year and a fifth report making no income.
  7. New book sales don’t account for library patrons or the used book market. Used books? I don’t see ebooks showing up at yard sales. Consider that an advantage.
  8. The average American adult reads just 15 minutes a day, according to one survey that apparently doesn’t considering texting. On the other hand, just what are the others looking at on their phones?
  9. Still, if you’re an author, don’t quit your day job, OK?
  10. Only 1 percent of audiobooks on Audible are self-published.

If you’re a writer or a reader, look at the competition

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Do you ever feel guilty as a reader? Not just in what you’re reading or in the things you “ought” to be doing in the time you’re engaged in a book or even a magazine, but also in the reality that you just can’t keep up in your particular field of interest?

And how about that nagging fear that maybe somebody else, somewhere, is already covering what you’re trying to develop … and probably doing it better?

If you’re an author, here’s what you’re up against

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Let’s begin with the competition. Readers are a minority in today’s society. If you want to tell your story or deliver the data in readable terms, it’s a shrinking audience, one further diced by increasing alternatives.

Let’s start with the first question. Do you read books? If not, nobody’s interested in yours. Period. Forget all the movies and so on of fame and wealth.

Google Books concluded that 129,864,880 books have been published since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440 up to 2010. But, thanks to self-publishing and ebooks, there’s been an explosion since.

It’s enough to make the writing life feel futile.

Just how many new books are being published, anyway?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

November is the month when a lot of amateur writers make a push to start and finish writing a novel. While I applaud the effort, I also question whether we need that many new manuscripts.

Again, definitive figures turn out to be elusive. Still, focusing on the United States, here’s what turns up:

  1. A conventional view places the output at 600,000 to 1 million new titles every year. That’s between 1,700 to 2,700 published every day – or more than 100 books an hour. Not all of it’s fiction, of course, not by a long shot. But if you’re writing, the competition is stiff.
  2. Another view puts the number at 4 million new books a year, three-quarters of them self-published. Under the radar, as it were.
  3. Hard cover and paperbacks account for just half of the books being sold in America. Ebooks get 36 percent, and audiobooks and “other” formats take up the rest. (When compared by the amount spent on each category, printed-on-paper editions skewer the picture.)
  4. A third of all ebooks are self-published.
  5. Two-thirds of the top-rated, self-published books are written by women, compared to just 39 percent of conventionally released books.
  6. The number of self-published books has increased by 264 percent in a five-year span.
  7. Of authors who released their first book in the last ten years, 1,200 traditionally published authors have earned $25,000 or more a year, compared to 1,600 self-published authors. That’s an eye-opener.
  8. The global publishing market is expected to grow at 1 percent a year, while the self-publishing market is expected to grow at 17 percent. I’m unclear if the figures are based on sales earnings or on the number of copies sold. Still, it’s a trend worth watching.
  9. Not every non-fiction book is read cover-to-cover.
  10. Fiction is for escape.

How many books do you read a year?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

These days, it seems that everyone I meet has written a book. As an author myself, I’d much rather for everyone to have read a book in the past week. Or, gee, even a newspaper.

Trying to get solid figures on how much is being published or read is trickier than you might suspect. But to get us started, let me offer some findings, albeit with a grain of salt. And, to further complicate matters, I’m not exactly sure how the researchers are defining “book.” I’m assuming textbooks, instruction manuals, catalogs, and the like are excluded. But cookbooks? They’re big in our household. That said, in the United States:

  1. Readership averages four books a year.
  2. A quarter to a half of adults admit to reading no books.
  3. A typical bookworm, on the other hand, devours 14 a year.
  4. Non-fiction dominates over fiction, three to two.
  5. History, biography, and memoir are major sellers.
  6. Two-thirds of book readers are women, but they comprise 80 percent of the fiction audience. Some surveys suggest that women age 18-24 are the most frequent fiction readers.
  7. On the other hand, half of American book readers are over age 55.
  8. Romance is the best-selling fiction genre, accounting for a third of the books sold. Mystery, fantasy, and sci fi are also boffo.
  9. Fiction titles still dominate bestseller lists.
  10. Books aren’t just for readers. They’re also for collectors. And gift giving.

 

As I wrote to somebody, somewhere

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

“Gimmicks” is, of course, a loaded word, pejorative, “cheap tricks,” say in contrast to “devices” or structural support or a Greek chorus or some such. In Vonnegut’s day, his repeated quips made him hip, sassy, cool, droll, fun to read, on the same shelf as supercharged Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson. They were never dull, archly serious, overtly pedantic. Oh, maybe strike the last item, in retrospect. But somehow we always wanted another hit. I don’t mean that in the best-seller sense. No, that would be a sell-out. (Maybe that’s the crux of the issue you’re raising.)

As much as I loved Vonnegut’s work, especially Rosewater, I’m surprised how little I remember all these years later, apart from the asterisk, just don’t ask me which novel that punctuated.

By the way, I am taken with the ideal of a short novel, though obtaining that can be elusive.

One facet to consider is the way Vonnegut spoke from the Midwest, a region largely ignored or overlooked in American literature, in contrast to New York City mostly Manhattan but rarely Queens or the Bronx. That in itself was a major accomplishment, even if it was from his firehouse on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. So it goes.

Well, his father did run a hardware store and had to sell, uh, useful gimmicks. Drain stoppers, screws, nuts, hammers. (Bang, bang, expletive.)

It is amazing how much “bad writing” fills “great literature,” or even the New York Times Magazine, as one of my ambitious writing teachers led us to see. (He, too, had his own addiction to cool as in gimmicks.)

One question you stir up is how much a piece works for the time when it’s published and how much will still work (function) in later eras? And why?

What did your daughter think of the book, anyway?

Here I am living in a most photogenic terrain

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Others have pointed out that most of the places I’ve resided in have been rich in natural beauty. While I’ve dampened that with an argument that you can find beauty wherever you are, or at least visual stimulation, I do have to concede how rarely that’s the case.

Many places, in fact, are brutal on the eyeballs.

Part of the attraction to Eastport for me was, after all, its access to wilderness and a rugged shoreline. Good shots seem to be waiting everywhere.

It shouldn’t be surprising that I’m overwhelmed by the number of solid photos I’ve been taking. How on earth is one supposed to organize them, much less share them?

It’s not like the old days of light meters, F-stops, film, or even focus, either.

Digital makes it a snap. All you have to do is look and see something.

And, yes, sometimes the camera – or cell phone – sees something more.

Eastport is a pedestrian-friendly village with old houses and storefronts, meaning more variety and detail than you’d find in the average drive-by suburb. It’s surrounded by forests, shorelines, and streams that present more opportunities. No wonder we see people pointing their lenses everywhere, and not just for selfies.

Where are all of these images going to go, anyway?