(I am staying out of the bargain bin. Find it interesting that raising the price on my novelette from $.99 to $2.99 is garnering more page views. Too early to see if there are more sales.)

I’m looking forward to your post on cash streams.

For example, on pricing, if you keep stuff at 99 cents, it might take a thousand titles to make a living. And, of course, if your writing sucks and your covers suck and you have spent no time learning how to write good blurbs, it could take two thousand titles and you still wouldn’t make a living. Or you could get fantastically lucky, write a great story or two, and make a ton of money on five or six titles. So much depends on the writing.

Here is what I have observed (all factors even), but no real data behind this except for a few dozen observations and some hard math. It will take about twenty to thirty titles under the same name to really get some decent reader feedback loops working. This is assuming your readers find a story and like it and want more. If all your work is priced out of the discount bin (meaning above 99 cents, most titles being $2.99 or up) then at twenty titles you can make some bill-paying money but not a living UNLESS you got fantastically lucky.

Above that, the number just grows. Also, many other factors are involved. I’m doing a blog post right now about how smart indie publishers are using dozens of cash streams to make money, not just limiting themselves to the big three (Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords). Stay tuned for that post coming shortly and that will answer far more questions.

It’s the sort of thing a lot of people understand but it helps to have the words to pin down what’s going on.

This is absolutely true. I love the Starship Troupers series by Christopher Stasheff (yes the spelling is correct), but the target audience is pretty niche, SciFi and theater people, so the series got dropped unfinished. Stasheff has said he intends to finish it now that he has an independent distribution channel.

B.S.

I saw a comment over there in which someone asserted that a writer would need 150 to 200 titles available for purchase in order to make a living in the new world. That was rather daunting to read, since as a newbie I have no backlist and my current writing pace looks to generate perhaps 6 or 7 titles per year. The commenter didn’t provide much in the way of facts & figures to back up up his assertion. But I’d be interested to hear your take on the issue. I trust your experience and clear thinking!

I wonder if they might save themselves if they re-created the experience? Bookshelf space will shrink, but they can replace it with more seated reading areas where people can bring in their ereaders or paper books, buy something from the coffee shop, and have a seat. Also, they can buy ebooks directly on their readers and the store would get the credit for the sale. Paper books would still be for sale, but in smaller quantity, and the POD system would be full in gear by then.

Perhaps this is naive and not financially viable, but to me, it seems like a possibly way for them to survive and create an environment where people want to go to read.

After all, starbucks dominates more on the atmosphere and environment they create than the product they sell.