Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Jessie Childs

I read an excellent book by an author named Jessie Childs, and I reviewed it with five stars on Amazon.  I was astonished to see only one review when I got there, the book is way too good for only 3 stars.  Well, since there was only one other review, she is on average now at 4 stars.  Very strange for a world class book, and her sales are in the 700,000 range, at least today (meaning none...)

I googled her to email her to suggest she remind admiring readers to review her book on amazon.com.  She has a website, but all contact with her must be though her agent and publisher.

Two things wrong here... to sell books today you must offer "you" to the reader as well.  You can make them pay on a "closer you get, the more you pay" basis, but direct contact must be there.  Childs needs an email address she reads, a snail mail address she attends.  Childs cannot be contacted directly.  A reader wants to write the author, not the agent.

In my particular case, some of what I will say the agent will not like, so it is unlikely to be forwarded.

And her book is with limited access on GoogleBooks, another mistake.  If researchers cannot land on every page of the book, they are less likely to find what they are looking for and buy the book.

No doubt she believes her publishers, a world-class outfit, will take care of all of the necessary promotion for her. Well, several years into publication and just two ratings on Amazon?  She is an excellent talent.  She needs to perish her publisher and start making top dollar as a writer.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Working For Royalties

I just got a quote for printing my next book.  These will land at about $2.00, amazon sells for $16...  they take 55%, so $8.80 to them...  $7.20 gross to me, less $2.00 cost... is $5.20 gross profit.  Out of the $5.20 comes the expenses of running the business of selling the book. Self-employed,  it takes my time and creativity to sell the book.  It takes technology to do so, mine.  It takes travel and entertainment, etc.  Mine.  How much net profit is up to me. What the tax rate is, is up to the politicians.  Like Senator Reid said, taxes are voluntary.

People who rely on royalties may earn say 5%.  Say they get a check for $10,000 and the tax rate is 30%, so they net $7000.  

$10,000 is 5% of $200,000. So for an author to earn the $10,000 royalty, a publisher has to move 12,500 copies. For an author to earn the same $10,000 in the perish your publisher method, the author need only sell 1923 copies.

If I sold $200,000 worth of this book on Amazon.com, that would be 12,500 copies.  At $5.20 each gross, that would yield $65,000 for me.  I can spend that money on things I think need to be done.  Develop a business website in which you put the zip code of your best customers, and a program spits out other zip codes in USA with similar demographics, so you can keep finding where to prospect for your best customers.  I can develop white board technology for editing books that allows for 50 pages to be shown and edited at once.  I can spend a month in Hong Kong and London researching a book on free trade. All of this takes my time, creativity and the income from the sale of the books, but it is what I love to do.  It is all business related.  What is left over is taxed.

Now, a person earning royalties can also spend his $10,000 on whatever he wants as a business expense as well.  In both instances there is the subtle point that the money being spent is pretax.  (If you needed $65,000 to develop a new whiteboard, but if you had no business, and you were an employee, you would start with your own money, after tax dollars, so you'd have to earn say $100,000 at your job to net the $65,000 after taxes to finance your project.)

More: if I sold 12,500 in a year, I'd be buying at least at the 5000 copy level, so my landed drops to $1.00, and so my gross profit jumps from $5.20 to $6.20, from $65,000 to $77,500, that I must spend or have taxed, my choice.  Someone earning royalties still gets only $10,000.  (How do you think publishers afford those swank offices in New York?)

Why anyone would do all the work to create a book out and then leave all the profits to someone else, I do not know.  Authors mount lawsuits against Amazon.com and Google over copyright violations, when Amazon.com and Google.com can assist you in sextupling your income, or more, as a writer.  Authors desperately work to keep their incomes as low as possible, slavishly demanding that copyright laws be enforced.  Not only is there no basis for copyrights in theory or practice,  it is just plain nuts to write for royalties.