Lesson 17

Writing Class 101 by Rick Kurtis
 Lesson 17 is a rant: Books, Books and More Books
 Thank you, and welcome to another week. I hope you enjoyed your last seven days writing up a storm. As all great authors know, sometimes we just need to vent.
Leave it up to me in choosing to be an author. One profession that even if you get into a bookstore, or a library, a person buys one book and shares it with ten friends, or sells it at a yard sale, or gives it away to Goodwill or Savers. 

Writing Class 101 by Rick Kurtis
 
Lesson 17 is a rant: Books, Books and More Books
 
Thank you, and welcome to another week. I hope you enjoyed your last seven days writing up a storm. As all great authors know, sometimes we just need to vent.
Leave it up to me in choosing to be an author. One profession that even if you get into a bookstore, or a library, a person buys one book and shares it with ten friends, or sells it at a yard sale, or gives it away to Goodwill or Savers. 

        Or perhaps, a library buys maybe ten copies for hundreds of people to read. When the book gets used, bent, or is no longer read, they either sell them, or toss them away.
Publishing houses have their own bestsellers, and pretend to look for new talent going through 7000 submissions every month. And yes, if you did it all by yourself and you are making sales on Amazon, getting 40 to 70 percent in sales, then they might want to offer you a contract at ten percent provided you have an agent who gets fifteen percent of your ten percent. If you have pictures they want the artist to get five percent of your ten percent. Does this make sense to you?
Now here’s the kicker. You did it all, and they now help you market your book. You buy the books through them, the publisher at a discount which they make a profit on, and they set up interviews or book signings. You have to take off from your 9-to-5 job, drive or fly, rent a U-Haul and hotel just so you can boost sales for the publisher. Do you think even 1000 books will pay for your expenses? Remember, you have to buy them from the publisher, and all the publisher does is send an email to Print on Demand.
Let’s break this down. You buy 1000 books, and they, my estimate, make a profit of two dollars per book. That’s $2000. You paid $5000 plus shipping, which is a couple hundred more, and now you have to hope that you sell all 1000 books for fifteen dollars each, which is a profit of ten dollars. Are you with me so far? 500 sales may be close to recover the cost of the books. Let’s say six hours, 500 books, that’s eighty-four books an hour, four books every three minutes. Not much time to talk to your fans.
So reasonably, 250 sales for a long six-hour day is around one book every two minutes. Go ahead, keep doing the math, while you think on what kind of gift you will give the store owner or manager as a thank you. How much will that cost? Don’t forget, you need a phone and a phone plan that can take credit cards, which also costs for each transaction fee. Now you have to pack up, go home with all your left-over books in hopes of selling them later. Guess what. The Publisher made money. All of this for the love of telling a story.
But you know what? After all the horror stories, all the 7,000,000 to 10,000,000 books piled up on Amazon, all the authors giving books away for free, and 15,000 new books being released every month, I continue to write my books with four published and 50 plus waiting in the wings, and thirty more to write, which I will, I enjoy every stinking filled moment of being an internationally known author.
That’s all I want to share this week. Thank you for taking the time, and I’ll have a real lesson for you next week. Until then, enjoy the time you have in writing your story and don’t let things get you down.
 
Happy Writing from rickkurtisbooks.com