I've got paper

Paperbacks, that is. Thanks to the heroic effort of my editor, Kayla Kauffman, PhD, the author of a book that was a year behind schedule has published the paperback version a full week “early.”

The ebook of Framed: A Villain’s Perspective on Social Media has dominated the New Release rankings. But, it won’t be a “new” release forever. What about the overall rankings?

I’m outselling traditionally published titles—books that have sold thousands of copies and have hundred of reviews. Now, because I know exactly how many copies I’m selling each day and how my rank has changed with the passage of time, it’s easy to estimate how many books are actually being sold in this niche on Kindle.

This isn’t a newsletter where I’m going to shill books, products, and services. I want to address the fun stuff, like, am I making enough money to do this full time? My revelation is that the top title in this genre on Kindle is probably selling less than 300 copies per month. So, no.

I’ve got paper[backs], but in dollar terms I’m deep in the hole.

I recently shared some of my learnings to the r/selfpublish community on Reddit. My post garnered over 300 upvotes and 50,000 views. You can read it here.

The finances of this operation will be explored at a later time, but I’ll disclose a few numbers that everyone seems most interested in. Selling the ebook at $0.99 earns me $0.35 in royalties. The print cost of the 440 page paperback is over $6. Talented copy editors charge $0.020 - $0.030 per word, and I paid for more than 140,000 words to be reviewed.

I’m focusing on promotion and advertising. I’m confident that I can reach the #1 overall bestseller rank in my Kindle genre. Along the way, I hope to see paperback sales pick up. Paperback sales are only counted when the copies ship, so there’s quite a bit of a delay in determining if a campaign is working or if a friend is being truthful in telling me that they purchased the book.

Those of you holding out on purchasing Framed because you “only listen to audiobooks” should just buy one of these formats. However, speaking of conducting a practical business, there is a certain sales threshold at which I’ll commission an audiobook. Let’s get there.