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RussInCheshire Nov 9, 2022

I made my first foray into publishing. It's ... weird.

First: pre-orders for my book exceeded £120k, and top 10 in Sunday Times, which is lovely.

But then I find out that translates to about £8k income for me because

- Amazon take 60%
- Distribution takes 10%
- I have to fund any additional prints of the book
- Publishers take half of what's left
- And I don't get anything - ANYTHING - for a year.

How do people make a living at this? Seriously? How?

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RussInCheshire Nov 9, 2022

I'm seriously considering self-publishing from now on. I can design promo and sales websites, design covers, typeset the book, market it via social media.

All I need is a printer and a warehouse, and how hard can it be to get that? Or just do it digital-only.

The entire industry seems swamped with needless delays, needless expenses, and needless layers of managers and editors.

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RedCelia 🇪🇺🇮🇹🇺🇦🇦🇫💙😷Nov 9, 2022

@RussInCheshire speaking as a bookseller, I would advise against self publishing tbh. I am sure there is a huge amount of faff in going through a publishing house, but nothing like the faff of trying to do it alone, even before you try to get the books into actual shops.

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Jürgen Hubert Nov 10, 2022

@RedCelia @RussInCheshire I dunno, I found the work relatively straightforward.

It _is_ quite a bit of extra work, but it's manageable.

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RedCelia 🇪🇺🇮🇹🇺🇦🇦🇫💙😷

@juergen_hubert @RussInCheshire I am glad it worked for you, I can see that Barnes and Noble list your German folktale book for sale on their website, but can't find a single shop stocking it in the US and UK bookshops don't even seem to list it. Which is what I mean about the difficulty of getting self published books into shops. I am sure the book is great but without the heft of a publisher behind it readers can't find out.