The profit motive

If you write spanking novels or short stories and publish them as e-books, the question of profit is one that cannot be kept away from one's thoughts from time to time.

The first reason simply to know whether you could make a living just out of writing your favorite material.   And here's the rub:  the average self-published e-book makes its author(s) an average of $300 a year.

Your typical first time author, selling at the average Kindle store price of $2.99 may expect to see 12 volumes a month move from the bookstore into the customer's shopping cart.   (We shall look at the the word to price ratio in another post - for now, assume 30,000 to 40,000 words as an average).

So - to make a minimum-wage-sort of income of $15,000 a year, you need about 100 titles in print.

Wow.   It would take about 9 months to write a 40,000 word book - or 75 years to hit 100.   The prognosis is not good.

But wait - it might not be that bad.

We writers of spanking tales have a much smaller audience than the general reading population - but our audience routinely comes looking for us to fulfill their reading desires.

I am egotistical enough to think I am a competent writer - if not, I would never have published - and all 4 of my works are beating the 12 volumes a month average by a big margin.   One by over 10 times that amount.   And I do not think that I am that special.    (OK - I hope I am, but I have no evidence as yet to support it).

Maybe we spanko authors have an edge that other authors do not.

So - how about this?   If you are an author of spanking fiction, and are willing to share with me your publishing figures, I shall build a small summary (with assured anonymity when requested) so that our fellow newbies have an accurate guide to show them what to expect when they join us, and where they stand in the spanking author league.

If you are interested. drop me a line at davids.holly@yahoo.com and I'll let you know what detail makes sense.   If nothing else, you are guaranteed to get some links to your works embedded in future articles in this blog.