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Writers and Editors (RSS feed)

The truth about book sales and authors' income

Updated 8-19-18) Warning: The news is not good but this is just a sampling.
Why Authors Are Earning Less Even As Book Sales Rise (Adam Rowe, Forbes, 8-11-18) Book publishers incomes are rising "partially due to rising digital audiobook and ebook sales," but authors' incomes are declining, says the Authors Guild, about this article: "The disparity between book sales and author salaries isn’t news. But seeing the statistics laid out simply on the page can help develop an understanding of where the money is going." Quoting the Forbest article: "Overall, revenues appear to be holding steady, as traditional publishers double down on the latest trend or format (which are political tell-alls and digital audiobooks, respectively, if anyone's wondering)....But thanks to the effects of price points set by the largest publishers in response to Amazon, industry corner-cutting, and book piracy, those authors behind the stories that power the publishing industry are earning increasingly less for their efforts."
• "Only 39% of authors supported themselves exclusively through writing-related work," according to The Wages of Writing: Key Findings from the Authors Guild 2015 member survey. Author incomes are down, hybrid authorship is up, and authors are spending more time marketing than ever before. (Hybrid authorship is the practice of self-publishing while also being traditionally published.) Authors spend more time on marketing, less on writing books. Traditional publishers’ promotional budgets have all but dried up,  Read More 
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Open Sky turns bloggers into a sales force

Erick Schonfeld wrote about Open Sky for TechCrunch in April in Launch: OpenSky Wants To Turn Bloggers Into Sellers Without Sacrificing Their Souls. "While OpenSky sounds at first like an affiliate network, it isn’ Read More 
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Your elevator speech

Marcia Yudkin suggests this template for your elevator speech: "I specialize in helping ___ (who?) who have ___ (what problem?) get ___ (what result?)" (from (Marcia's Mantras, a nanozine) This echoes a theme in Roar! Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle: A Business Fable

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The difference between marketing, publicity, and advertising

In an excellent audio interview on the Great Writers Book Marketing Series, John Kremer (author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books)-- get the Sixth Edition) explains the difference between publicity, advertising, and marketing. Publicity is getting some form of media to do a story about you. (You may have to pay someone to help you  Read More 
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Jonathan Karp puts authors center front in 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing

"We all like to believe we are essential to a book's success, but the truth is, we are a marginal factor. The author, and the book, matter most, followed by the media, booksellers and readers. We're facilitators. The most important decisions we make are at the acquisition and positioning stages. That's where sales and  Read More 

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