Sam, I’ll share a quick story I told my real life writing group about a podcast I listen to.
Long story short, it’s a lesson about how even “experts” can struggle earning income from creative work.
I listen to a podcast where two authors/business guys review new things in the world of publishing each week. It’s a very informative and funny show. They do a great job. They’ve been doing the podcast for 5 years, and basically they brand it as “helping authors make more money selling books” type of show, okay?
Well, anyway, Guy #1 on the podcast then creates another podcast where he discloses his book income and basically we follow him over the year as he tries to boost his own book income, mostly with Amazon ads. Well, so he discloses what he earned last year with his books in 2018.
He grossed $29,000. But he spent $22,000 in ads, so yeah he profited about $7,000, and that’s not counting a few other misc expenses he probably had.
So we have a guy who puts himself out there as an expert to “help authors make more money selling books” and has been doing a weekly podcast on the topic for FIVE years, and he himself netted just $7,000.00 writing books last year. It’s quite sobering.
@Eric_Moser
Yikes. Tbh, I’ve never spent money on any of my writing projects on anything aside from art, music, editing, etc, and I definitely don’t plan on it.
Just releasing lots of good works is really the best way to build a fanbase, I think.
Yeah the great thing about writing HG is that you can keep your expenses pretty low. Indie publishing with the new “pay to play” Amazon ad environment is super scary. People could easily end up chasing ROIs of 10% or lower, or even take pretty big losses.
I meant on a sales basis, not judging by Patreon. Of course, there are lots of great authors that are underrated, but I’m speaking on a relative basis when it comes to CSGs.
I’d argue that then the fanbase can at least be weird (as discussed in the critique vs criticism thread)
To take myself as example, I keep hearing how my wips one of the best out there (thanks people ;_; ) but the thread is pretty silent except for a handful of lovely peeps.
It’s a bit of a disconnect going on, especially when looking for feedback and ideas (you dont wanna know how much some questions helped me with stuff cause I did not think of it)
I think that’s due to poor organization. I would LOVE if I could click on the author’s name on this forum (or better yet, on Steam) and see other works by them. Even in this thread, I was surprised to see some of the titles he wrote. I genuinely didn’t know.
Honestly I would give some money if the rewards are good enough to warrant it. Though I can’t really think of what the rewards would be. Maybe early access or something.
The market is a very strange place. Speaking from experience, I published five novels in the same week, two entirely different genres. My primary novel under my real name had over a hundred pages. In that novel, I invested at least $500 into promotion and stuff. I chased book bloggers and stuff. At the end, I had 5 reviews and only sixty or so downloads.
The other four novels were under a pseudonym, three of them were 25 pages each, and the fourth was a compilation of the three. I didn’t invest a penny. Sold over 2,000 copies and has only one review. If that is not strange, I don’t know what is. My experience has taught me, the book cover plays a great role in what people buy and don’t buy.
What’s with this Fake News™, lol? I’m kidding! I’ve gotten this misinterpretation before. The Self-Insert tier just offers a few custom paragraphs for your unique main character’s name. So you’re self-inserting a bit of your particular personality into the main character’s head. It’s not a full npc by any means.
I like keeping my npc count as low as I can get away with!
@Samuel_H_Young
I’d definitely encourage you to do a patreon. Definitely take the time to consider rewards folks will be interested in. One thing about writing full time though: you can’t expect 2x more hours = 2x more work or better quality work. We’ve got a set amount of creative energy in us each day, and knowing when your spent and when it’s time to clock out is important if you want to stay in the game.
Absolutely. I usually get about 1k words done per day, and I think I’d probably get 2k per day without a job, because it gets extremely exhausting to write all day.
Maybe about 20% of the time I write in my notebook, 20% on my phone, and 60% on my computer. I mean, I’ve written 8k in one day before, but that’s not sustainable. I think 2k per day is a good amount because it’s a lot of writing, but not so much that you’ll shave years off your life or start hating it.
Just want this corrected. Early Beta Access is not a reward tier for Sera’s Patreon. The highest tier offers a specialized short story with the RO of your choice but this is not a monthly basis reward.
In my view, it would be more practical to have a part time job to have a stable income coming in. The rewards should be tied to what you could deliver as well and worth it for the people who will support you.
