It made me A. Google the person and B. realize that I wanted to dish out advice...
Instead of dishing out the advice I figured I would write this post.
Ranking (we're talking Amazon only here)
People seem so flustered by this. How do they come up with their numbers, what do they mean as far as sales? Are they trustworthy?
Here's what I have discerned thus far.
Take your books rank (not your author rank) and divide it by 100,000. That's about the number of books sold in a day that you can expect to see.
ex: Sales Rank #2,000
100,000/2,000= 50
So 50 books sold a day at that rank. It's not science so it could be more like 40-60 a day but its a dang good guideline.
Let's take this further, if you are self-pubbed, and you opted for the 70% royalty and your book is priced at $3.99 your payment is about $2.79 per book sold. I'm not even going to get into the international exchanges.
So if you can maintain a #2,000 rank you're looking at $4100/ month paid out. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a book above a #10,000 rank for more than a week or so?! Really hard.
Of our hypothetical $4100 a month you'd need to deduct 40% of that for self-employment taxes. You're "paycheck" then ends up being $2460 a month.
If you are with a publisher and let's say you have an excellent publisher who offers you 50% royalties... using the same figures above your cut is $1.39 per book sold.
At rank #2000 your royalty payment for a month would be $2094 and after taxes $1256/month.
Most people don't get to hang out in the #5000 and above rank for long.
So as you can imagine at a rank of #10,000 you are taking the numbers above and reducing them by more than half! Now notice that many of the books you've been looking at are probably ranked anywhere between (on average) #20,000 -#100,000. It's tough out there! That's definitely not a full time income. But it is something! ;)
On to the next phase of my spiel.
I am always flabbergasted when I see posts, articles, etc. posted by aspiring writers complaining about their sales when they don't have an online presence at all or are inactive in their online endeavors.
Point Blank Advice:
It takes more time marketing and networking your books to spread the word and make a name for yourself than it did to write your book. If you don't like to connect with readers, or do the research to find out where, how and when to market yourself, paid or not, it's going to be hard to reach people and gain exposure.
It's a digital world. People want to be able to see you in social media, on a website, Goodreads, a profile page on whatever platform they are buying their book and then... in real life too! Connect with people! Bloggers are seriously the lifeblood of word of mouth. Make friends with them. I've met some of the most amazing people through my writing adventures thus far. Authors, Bloggers and Betas that I'm really happy and lucky to call my friends now!
You can never giveaway too many free copies of your works for giveaways. Donate your book to giveaways. It puts your name out there. It puts your work out there. People start talking and reviewing. It's worth it.
Basically it works out to be the same adage as you are what you eat. You reap what you sow. The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.
Writing!
If I could stay home and write 5 days a week I could probably write 3k-5k words a day and still get housework done and other 'duties' (ha, I said duties). Most books are 80-100k words long. Minimum I could have a book a month written (should the ideas be there in my head) !!! Sadly, I get an hour here, a sick day there and emails to myself randomly to write. I work full time, am a mom and a wife so I am lucky if I get a thousand to five thousand words written a month sometimes.
Here is what I aspire to though...
"It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction." — Jonathan Franzen
Truth. I get so distracted by notifications of updates of things. I need to eliminate that distraction.
"Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. " — Sarah Waters
This happens to me EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I. WRITE. I just sent my sad very first draft of Resistance to a trusted friend to have her read through it and make sure I'm not losing my mind. *Note* Keep that kind of friend around- always.
My goal is to write 800 words a day. Just 800. It sounds doable. Right?!
Through all this, no matter where it leads me... I just try to remember to
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