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Most DIY authors make less than $500 a year
Published: 5/25/2012 3:00 PM
Last Modified: 5/25/2012 3:00 PM


One of the illustrations from the Talist's survey of self-published writers.

E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey” has done more than raise the temperatures of its readers – it’s also bolstered the hopes of the thousands of writers.

The pseudonymous James is one of the more high-profile cases of a writer who found success and notoriety originally through self-publishing. Amanda Hocking, after publishing a number of paranormal romances herself, recently was signed to the $2.5 million publishing contract.

A couple of weeks ago, 20th Century Fox in conjunction with Ridley Scott (“Blade Runner”) and Steve Zaillian (“Mission: Impossible”) bought the film rights to a self-published science fiction novel titled “Wool,” by Hugh Howey.

But these are very much the exception to the rule in self-publishing, according to a survey compiled by the website Talist. If you’re lucky, you might be able to make upwards of $500 a year through self-publishing that novel you’ve been working on.

Talist is a kind of clearinghouse for information about self-publishing, founded and run by Steven Lewis, a writer and lecturer in Sydney, Australia. He and Dave Cornford conducted the survey in Feb. 2012, basing their conclusions on responses to 61 questions made by 1,007 self-published authors from 41 countries.

More than half the respondents said they earned less than $500 from their writing in 2011, with more than a quarter of the respondents saying they weren’t able to recoup the costs of getting their books on the marketplace.
However, Cornford said, only about 5 percent of the people who responded to the survery considered themselves “unsuccessful.” “Commercial success isn’t always the aim” for some writers, he said. “Just getting to press can be a big achievement -- maybe even a life-long goal
If there is a formula for success in self-publishing, it’s probably this: Be an educated woman in her 40s who writes romances, and writes a lot. Of the top 10 percent of self-published authors who earn 75 percent of the revenue, the majority were romance writers.
Also, Cornford noted, “The top earners spend more time writing than they do marketing” their work.
They also tend to make as much use of outside help as they can – whether it be paying someone to serve as a copy editor, or hiring an artist to create a striking cover.
“Authors who get the most outside help, whether paid or unpaid, tend to have the most success in the marketplace,” Lewis said.
As someone who has received more than his share of self-published books, and who has tossed 99 percent of them aside after just a few pages because of prose so egregiously bad that reading caused physical pain, I can state that very few local self-published authors have availed themselves of finding outside help in readying their books for market.
Still, Cornford said, in spite of the disparities between those who make a living wage with self-published books and those who don’t, many of the respondents “plan to release more work in the future, and half plan to release more work in 2012 than they did in 2011. So what we have in an ambitious and happy group of authors who are bravely entering the new world of self-publishing.”
The complete survey report can be purchased for $4.99 on Amazon – not surprisingly, Talist’s preferred means of self-publishing because, as Cornford said, “you can get your work before the public, and not have a garage full of unsold paperbacks.”













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James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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