Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
One of the goals of most authors is to sell enough books to replace a full-time income. I know I would love to be able to do nothing but write books all day and still pay the bills. But how realistic is that possibility?
The short answer is…A LOT.
Of course, this all truly depends on how much you are trying to make each month and your royalties. But for a lot of novelists, it means selling more than 100 books per day.
The Average Income of the US
First, let’s take the average salary for those living in the United States. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national average income was $59,384 by the end of 2023.
Now, depending on where you live, that’s not a lot to live on. However, it’s enough to afford a single apartment in a decent neighborhood here in Colorado.
However, in places like Los Angeles, you’ll definitely be staying in an Airbnb or have a few roommates.
Still, for the sake of argument, let’s take the numbers from the end of 2023 as our base for how many books we need to sell to replace a full-time income.
The Average Royalty
Royalties can come in all shapes and sizes and are reliant on the platform of which you’re using. This is in addition to whether you’re self-publishing or going the traditional route.
You could earn anywhere from 5 to 25% of what your books sell for on certain platforms. That’s probably one of the major drawbacks of being an author. You create the work but receive a minimal share of the income.
Now, the problem with trying to do a calculation of this sort is the extensiveness of which you can make money. If I put a chart of all the different platforms and royalty types, I could probably fill a couple of volumes of books.
However, I want to keep this post a bit simple.
For this example, we’re going to take what I make from sales of the paperback version of Kingmaker on Amazon.
Because I don’t enroll in the “Expanded Distribution,” will not use Kindle Select, and charge $12.99 here in the States, I earn about $2.95 per book.
How Many Books to Replace a Full-Time Income?
Now, let’s take our average yearly salary of $59,384 and divide it by how much I make in royalties per book:
59,384 / 2.95 = 20,130.17
I would have to sell 20,131 books per year to clear the average salary in the United States. That’s not including any expenses I had to produce the book.
Common self-publishing expenses include:
- Editing services ($4,000, but could be as high as $10,000)
- Cover Art ($300 – from various graphic designer sources)
- Marketing (can easily vary depending on method)
Just adding the editing and cover art services, that’s a minimum of an extra 1,458 books I need to sell to make up those expenses (4300 / 2.95).
Let’s say that you include those two services so you can make back the money you spent.
You would need to sell a total of 21,589 books throughout the year to replace a full-time income after adding just cover art and editing. To put this into perspective, that is about 60 books per day.
Keep in mind that this doesn’t include marketing expenses. And when it comes to publishing a book, marketing is probably the category that gets the lion’s share of upfront costs.
Then, you could add the nightmare of calculating insurance, taxes, retirement, and other fees that come out of the traditional full-time paycheck.
This is Just a Very Rough Estimate!
Because there are so many different ways to sell books and so many different types of books to sell, the above is an extremely rough estimate.
For example, low-content books will have a much different payout scheme. Not to mention that every author is going to set their prices differently. This is in addition to the royalty percentages of various platforms.
However, there is one inescapable truth regardless of the book: you’ll have to sell A LOT of copies to replace a full-time income.
Perhaps the best method for you is to take your full-time income and calculate your royalties against it, similar to what I did earlier. This will give you an idea of how many books you’ll need to sell in your situation.
To get an idea of what you’ll make from Amazon with printed books, you can use the free KDP Royalty Calculator.
How to Sell More Books Every Day
The Internet is full of bloggers and YouTubers who will share their lists to sell more books. Unfortunately, I’ve found that a vast portion of them center purely on the circumstantial.
This means that those methods rely too heavily on things happening in your specific situation.
I’m not saying that all of these lists and methods are crap. However, you need to take them with a grain of salt until you find the methods that work best for your specific situation.
With that being said, let’s go over some of the most common ways I and other authors have sold our books.
Book Conventions and Expos
As of this post, I haven’t attended a book convention or expo. However, a lot of authors have had a great deal of success by going to more events and festivals.
For instance, Ben Wolf increased his sales by almost 17x over a five-year period by going to more events while setting up some elaborate booths to catch a potential reader’s attention.
The primary element of attending events and conventions is being able to address the public. That means putting aside being shy or ignoring that impostor syndrome that tells you that you “don’t belong.”
Create an Audiobook Version
Thanks, in part, to sites like Audible, audiobook sales are continuously on the rise year-over-year. In fact, the revenue for audiobooks virtually doubled over the span of five years topping out at $1.8 billion in 2022.
I haven’t done this myself outside of creating the Despair series on Wattpad (which I really need to finish). However, I’ve seen quite a few authors who grew their exposure quickly due to having audiobooks available.
This might require a bit of an upfront cost to hire voice actors unless you plan on reading the book yourself. And for the love of Pete, don’t use AI to read your book.
Paid Promotion Sites
There are hundreds of promotional sites that are geared to help authors publish more books. The trick is to find the best ones that work for your book and avoid the ones that are blatant scams.
I’ve heard of authors such as Rob Dircks who had quite a bit of success off of sites like BookGorilla.com. And some authors will generate the majority of their sales using advertisements on platforms like Facebook.
The drawback to promotional sites is the upfront costs. Some are relatively cheap while others require a daily investment, such as using Google or Facebook Ads.
Giveaways and Contests
Although giveaways are counterproductive to replace a full-time income, they can help you sell more books over time. A part of this has to do with word-of-mouth from the ones who win and awareness from those who don’t.
Some authors will go to the extent of giving away books in exchange for reviews. Because, let’s face it; a book with more reviews tends to sell better.
The nice thing about giveaways is that it doesn’t have to cost you a lot in upfront expenses. For instance, you could get 10 copies of an average-length novel for about $48.40 through Amazon to give away.
You’ll have to be careful about giveaways and contests, though. Some regions have very strict rules when running a raffle or contest. Make sure you look up your location to ensure you’re able to do these without bringing the law down on yourself.
Having Confidence
Can confidence really help sell more books and replace a full-time income? Yes, actually.
Part of why a lot of self-published authors don’t sell a lot of copies is because of a lack of faith in themselves and what they created. Again, it’s part of the impostor syndrome thing I pointed out earlier.
For instance, what if you don’t think anyone is going to like your book? What if you’re afraid people will hate it and leave bad reviews? This often leads to authors not really pushing their books out of fear of rejection.
On the other hand, someone who is proud of their work will more than happily promote it in any way they can. I cover a bit of this in A Freelancer’s Tale while dealing with doubts and depression.
See what I did there?
It’s Not Impossible to Sell Books to Replace a Full-Time Income, But…
It will take a lot of different investments to get your book out there. I’m not just talking about financing services or setting aside a savings account for marketing. The biggest investment will be that of time.
When you’re trying to balance a personal life, a job, family, and self-publishing a book, you’ll find time is a premium. From writing the book’s first draft to researching marketing methods that work, you’ll put in a lot of hours.
Yet, it’s often worth all of those investments when you see how many people absolutely love and enjoy your book.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that replacing a full-time income as an author is exceptionally difficult. Most of us will still have side jobs just to keep the bills paid in the meantime. Don’t assume that you can just quit your job today and write your first book.
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