Kindle Ebooks: Digital Publishing By the Numbers

Digital self-publishing (on the Kindle and similar readers) is hot news.

Many writers are taking a look at their offers of traditional publishing contracts, and are studying the numbers. For many writers self-publishing their books makes sense.

You need to work out your own numbers however. Granted, they’re not likely to look anything like bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler’s — yours will be much more modest, especially for a first book.

In an interview, Barry Eisler Explains Self-Publishing Decision – The Daily Beast, Eisler goes into detail on his numbers:

“Ballantine managed to sell about 10,000 combined digital copies of my last two books at a $9.99 price point (a price point that was earning me $1.49 per unit sold, BTW) in the latest three-month period for which I have data. Call that 5000 of each book for three months, so 1,667 of each book per month. If I cut the Ballantine price in half and still can only move 1,667 units a month, at a $3.50 per unit royalty ($4.99 x 70% = $3.50), that’s about $5,833 per month. But unlike paper books and digital sold at paper prices, low-priced digital books sell steadily, so it seemed to me that I could make about $70,000 per year, per book on my own.”

It’s worth reading the entire article.

These days, you don’t need a standard publishing contract, even if all the stars aligned and you were offered one. For superstar writers and for others, it just makes more sense to do it yourself.

A note of caution however: you need ways to get the word out about your book.

I’ve been noodling around with a humor novel idea for a couple of weeks. I keep telling myself that don’t have any time to write it. Chances are that I will write it however, and there’s zero chance I’d even consider traditional publishing.

If you’re writing a book, share your thoughts in the comments. Are you looking for a traditional publishing contract, or are you going the DIY route?