{"id":1958,"date":"2012-06-21T08:19:43","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T15:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=1958"},"modified":"2012-06-21T08:21:54","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T15:21:54","slug":"publishing-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=1958","title":{"rendered":"Publishing Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

So this article<\/a> is making quite a splash in the indie-publishing circles:<\/p>\n

Publishers pay terribly and infrequently. They are shockingly dumb when it comes to pricing, and if I see one more friend\u2019s NY-pubbed ebook priced at $12.99, I\u2019m going to scream. They do minimal marketing and leave the vast majority of work up to the author. Unless, of course, you are already a big name author. Then they fly you around the country for signings and treat you like the precious moneymaking gem that you are. The rest of us get next to nothing in terms of promotion. If your book takes off, they get the credit. If it tanks, you get the blame.<\/p>\n

No, thank you. I\u2019m all set with that.<\/p>\n

You know who I do like, though? Amazon. Well, all online ebook sites that let me self-publish, but Amazon is the true powerhouse right now. Say what you want about this company, but it\u2019s because of them that I can continue writing. <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Because of Amazon and other sites, I\u2019m making enough money that I can continue writing. I\u2019m averaging sales of 3,500 books a month, not including the month that Amazon featured Flat-Out Love in a list of books for $3.99 and under. That month I sold 45,000 Kindle copies, and sold over 10,000 the next month. Those numbers are insane to me. Absolutely insane. The fact that I continue to sell well a year after the book\u2019s release is humbling.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are more and more stories like this one, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that anyone who stands between author and reader—specifically the agent, and the publisher, who between them have traditionally taken the vast majority of any book’s profits—are now irrelevant. If you can write a book that people want to read—and if you can do that with some frequency—you can make a living as a writer. For a long time, this wasn’t the case. The ability for writers to connect with readers in an unmediated fashion is one of the great gifts the Internet has given us.<\/p>\n

Although I still rank the Internet slightly under epidurals, as far as the achievements of civilization go.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I’m still working on my second novel. My first should be coming out on Amazon soon (I’m waiting on the cover art, which is coming along great and is going to be amazing<\/em>). Meanwhile, I’ve contracted with another wonderful artist<\/a> to do illustrations for The Big Booger Bubble<\/a><\/em>: I just got the first sketches today, and, oh man, I laughed and laughed.<\/p>\n

Look, here’s the sketch for the “nose fruit”:<\/p>\n

\"nose<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ha ha ha ha ha!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So this article is making quite a splash in the indie-publishing circles: Publishers pay terribly and infrequently. They are shockingly dumb when it comes to pricing, and if I see one more friend\u2019s NY-pubbed ebook priced at $12.99, I\u2019m going to scream. They do minimal marketing and leave the vast majority of work up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1958"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1968,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions\/1968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}