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There's lots of vanity presses that will take your manuscripts and edit and publish it for you and it will cost many thousands of dollars. There's no guarantee anyone except you will buy a copy. A friend of mine did that about 15 years ago. The vanity press published his book and put it on Amazon. It has no reviews and there's no sales figures listed for it in 15 years.
A relative of mine wrote a song. I added some chords and played and sang and recorded it for them for nothing. They then went to one of the vanity music companies that will put your song to music and record it, again for thousands of dollars. It went nowhere.
The fact is not even pros know if their work is any good or will sell until it is out there. (Justin Bieber put his songs on youtube for free and it took off.) Self publishing is an inexpensive, hassle free way to find out if anyone is interested in your work. And you can put a copy on your bookshelf to impress your friends.
Wrong question. The right question is what genre do you have a passion for? What genre do you know best? Pick the genre that you are most likely to write a good novel and write that. If you are skillful it will sell. If you are not then pick a different career..
Mmm.... mil-SF! Sounds interesting! I'll have to google that!
There is a lot of competition in books, but those authors who build a following get the larger shares of the market. Although Arkay meant a different thing, it's interesting that the term "inventory" in a specific ebook has no meaning since once Amazon has one copy of the author's work it can be sold infinitely and never run out. Not so with paper books!
Paper books and ebooks are competing markets but there are distinct advantages to both. If you are good you can have the best of all worlds by publishing your works in paper and ebook formats at the same time. If you reach this level you are a success!
And Amazon's CreateSpace is the way to go for print copies. It's print on demand, so nothing is on paper until someone orders a copy. Not sure how they do it, but those books still go out via Amazon Prime's one or two-day turnaround. Works very well.
Most people are terrible drivers. Most people are lousy in bed. There's a reason there are so many traffic accidents and so many unsatisfactory relationships.
Now all of those equally sub-par writers are flooding markets like Amazon with self-published dreck.
It's getting to the point where writing a sale-worthy novel or screenplay is the easy part, and getting noticed is the struggle.
But don't give up - NEVER give up!
And good luck!
I have read some real doozies way back before ebook. However, nothing can quite compare to some really horrible, just downright awful reads I can come across on Kindle. The cover looks great! Even some great reviews, then I read and I am like Whoa, WHAT is this? Took me some time to just figure out to stick the paying ones. My mom loves the free ones and .99 cent ones but she said she has to go through a lot of bad ones to get the good one. It is not just the story, writing , sequence it is everything bad like grammar and use of words. Yes, I curse but for some reason I like it kept out of books I am reading I mean the whole point is to go off somewhere (for me I mostly read fiction). One really good book I got for a buck once was actually really good but the author would not stop using the f word over and over it was so unnecessary but oh well I still read it
The real problem with using Amazon's CreateSpace is that you are getting the bread of the sandwich without the meat. I doubt I can overstate the value of a mortar and brick publisher and all the resources they bring to you including publicity, placement in retail stores, praise from their other captive authors more famous than you, and the list goes on and on.
As laina1980 points out, another benefit is copy editors who correct your grammar and spelling. A publisher will also have editors to critique your work and give you feedback on such things as over usage of "f word." There is a place for that and it varies by genre and sub-genre, there are genres where the word would be totally inexcusable. One sure sign is if that word is more than 10% of your word count!
In my opinion Amazon appears to be a good, last chance opportunity to publish your works if you cannot get a literary agent and/or brick and mortar publisher (and I understand that an unpunished author faces extreme odds in getting such). Self-publishing (you pay the publisher to print the books and sell them yourself) is in my opinion only for vanity authors and I doubt any would ever lead to a writing career.
I like to think that a good author who cannot find a traditional publisher could get their start on Amazon ebooks, and depending on success could parlay that success into becoming accepted by a literary agent and attracting a brick and mortar publisher, switching from Amazon to the traditional publisher. Anybody who has done this has in my opinion achieved success.
My own plan is to wait until I have a novel that is as ready for print as I can make it (and plans or outlines for sequels) and then make a few attempts to enlist a literary agent. I doubt that will succeed so the next step is Amazon. If I'm able to attract sufficient sales on my debut novel on Amazon (and it will have a sample from Book #2) and have perhaps a few in the series gaining successful sales, then I'll make another run on finding a literary agent and publisher.
I have no idea if an author can make it on Amazon sales alone. I'm pretty sure the answer is no, not if you intend to support yourself from your writing income. Depending on your idea of success and other income (I'm retired) and willingness to work partly for enjoyment, then I think you could achieve a small measure of success on Amazon, but only a small measure.
You'd have to be really good to escape Amazon only to the world of real publishing. I bet a few have done it. I bet the vast majority fail. I bet a few are satisfied with their Amazon only publishing and sales.
Publishing houses today do NOT offer copy editors anymore, unless you are one of the big name authors in their pool. Anyone else has to shell out for their own copy editing, and basically submit a "ready to publish" manuscript. If you look closely at any number of books published via PHs, you'll see typos and miswritten sentences galore, because they took the submission as a camera-ready copy. Source: numerous publishing house representatives at the Texas Writers League annual gathering in Austin.
Editors do not generally edit out overuse of cursing -- just read some of the recently published books to see. We might point out overuse, but if that's the author's favorite word, it'll stay. (shudder)
IF a PH takes your manuscript and actually publishes it, you can expect to see 10-15% of the sales price. The PH takes the rest. You'll also have to pay your agent, and you pay for certain numbers of books, plus you shell out for all the author visits to bookstores, etc. Unless you have a best seller, it's not an income level sufficient to quit your day job. In fact, more than a few authors have found themselves in the hole after a PH published the book.
As for whether an author can make it on Amazon sales alone, I give you this formerly traditional print published author, who has an excellent laydown of how his income increased after he dumped the agent and publishing house and went to e-book publishing:
When you publish via Amazon, you get 35-70% of the sales price, depending on what country is involved (the US is 70%). Beats all heck out of that PH's paltry 10-15%, doesn't it?
Finally, Spousal Unit has earned, to date, over $55,000 on 4 100-page (or so) Kindle books alone. Yes, a good writer can make it on Amazon sales alone...
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