Episode 238 - The Big Indie Author Data Drop 2024 with Melissa Addey
May 14, 2024
"Holly Greenland <ALLi blog manager> was trying to see if there are certain behaviors or characteristics of authors that make them more or less likely to be successful? And the one characteristic that came up as being linked to success was not being amiable. We really laughed about that, but then we kind of broke it up a bit. We're thinking, what is that about?" —Melissa Addey
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Melissa Addey discusses THE BIG INDIE AUTHOR DATA DROP 2024, including author income data; whether trad pub income is spikier than indie pub income; the growth of libraries; the continuing popularity of paperback; selling direct; trends in KU; the power of the backlist; behavioral aspects of indie authors (it's not what I would have expected!); the fact that indie and trad is not an either / or decision; and the importance of seeing the bigger picture (not just the shiny objects).
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
Listen to the full episode ...
Listen to and watch the interview ...
Until recently (when Matty took over the role) Melissa Addey was The Alliance of Independent Authors Campaigns Manager, focusing on ethics and excellence in self-publishing, as well as an author of historical fiction set in China, Morocco, and Ancient Rome.
Links
ALLi's Links:
www.allianceindependentauthors.org
www.allianceindependentauthors.org/facts is where all authors can collect the latest copy of the Big Indie Author Data Drop
Melissa's Links:
This is the link for The Dragon Throne, the escape room based on Melissa's book! https://www.lockedingames.co.uk/rooms-prices/the-dragon-throne-2/
From Intro:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200672390#aicontent
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
www.allianceindependentauthors.org
www.allianceindependentauthors.org/facts is where all authors can collect the latest copy of the Big Indie Author Data Drop
Melissa's Links:
This is the link for The Dragon Throne, the escape room based on Melissa's book! https://www.lockedingames.co.uk/rooms-prices/the-dragon-throne-2/
From Intro:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200672390#aicontent
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Melissa! What was the biggest surprise for you from the Big Indie Author Data Drop results? What data bore out what you believed about indie publishing?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
AI-generated Summary
This episode of "The Indy Author Podcast" features an interview between host Matty Dalrymple and guest Melissa Addey, Campaigns Manager at the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). They discuss the Big Indie Author Data Drop Report 2024, author income data, and trends in indie publishing. Here are the key points:
Background of Melissa Addey
- Melissa Addey works with ALLi, focusing on ethics and excellence in self-publishing.
- She is an author of historical fiction set in different parts of the world.
- Her involvement with ALLi led to the creation of the Indie Author Income Survey, revealing indie authors often earn more than traditionally published ones.
Key Findings and Discussions
- Data Scarcity in Indie Publishing: Melissa emphasized the lack of comprehensive data in self-publishing, which motivated ALLi to conduct its own research, including income surveys.
- Indie Author Income Survey: This survey found that indie authors were making more money than traditionally published authors, with income growing 53 percent year-on-year.
- Big Indie Author Data Drop: ALLi gathered data from various organizations, revealing insights like 75% of books sold were part of a series, underscoring the commercial advantage of series writing.
Emerging Trends
- Growth in Library Revenue: Libraries are becoming significant revenue sources for indie authors, with a 45% increase in revenue.
- Demand for Diverse Characters: Readers, especially Gen Z, are seeking stories with diverse characters, reflecting a broader societal shift towards inclusivity.
- Preference for Paperbacks: Despite the rise of ebooks, there's a growing interest in paperbacks, partly influenced by social media and the tangible nature of books.
- Direct Sales Increase: There’s a noticeable rise in authors selling directly to consumers, highlighting a shift towards more control over sales and marketing.
Behavioral Insights
- Character Traits of Successful Authors: Research indicated that successful indie authors tend to be less amiable, suggesting a degree of stubbornness and resilience is beneficial.
- Positive Sentiment towards Self-Publishing: A high percentage of indie authors view self-publishing positively, highlighting satisfaction with this publishing route.
Strategic Considerations for Authors
- Series Writing: Given the commercial success of series, authors are encouraged to consider this format for their works.
- Diverse Representation: The call for diverse characters is not just about their presence but about integrating them into the fabric of the narrative in a natural, unforced manner.
- Direct to Consumer Sales: The growth in direct sales suggests authors should explore direct marketing and sales channels to enhance their earnings.
Conclusion
The conversation between Matty and Melissa provided a comprehensive overview of the current state of indie publishing, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decisions, the profitability of series, the significance of diversity and direct sales, and the positive outlook of indie authors on their publishing journey. The interview underscores the evolving landscape of indie publishing, where data, direct engagement with readers, and adaptability to market trends are crucial for success.
Background of Melissa Addey
- Melissa Addey works with ALLi, focusing on ethics and excellence in self-publishing.
- She is an author of historical fiction set in different parts of the world.
- Her involvement with ALLi led to the creation of the Indie Author Income Survey, revealing indie authors often earn more than traditionally published ones.
Key Findings and Discussions
- Data Scarcity in Indie Publishing: Melissa emphasized the lack of comprehensive data in self-publishing, which motivated ALLi to conduct its own research, including income surveys.
- Indie Author Income Survey: This survey found that indie authors were making more money than traditionally published authors, with income growing 53 percent year-on-year.
- Big Indie Author Data Drop: ALLi gathered data from various organizations, revealing insights like 75% of books sold were part of a series, underscoring the commercial advantage of series writing.
Emerging Trends
- Growth in Library Revenue: Libraries are becoming significant revenue sources for indie authors, with a 45% increase in revenue.
- Demand for Diverse Characters: Readers, especially Gen Z, are seeking stories with diverse characters, reflecting a broader societal shift towards inclusivity.
- Preference for Paperbacks: Despite the rise of ebooks, there's a growing interest in paperbacks, partly influenced by social media and the tangible nature of books.
- Direct Sales Increase: There’s a noticeable rise in authors selling directly to consumers, highlighting a shift towards more control over sales and marketing.
Behavioral Insights
- Character Traits of Successful Authors: Research indicated that successful indie authors tend to be less amiable, suggesting a degree of stubbornness and resilience is beneficial.
- Positive Sentiment towards Self-Publishing: A high percentage of indie authors view self-publishing positively, highlighting satisfaction with this publishing route.
Strategic Considerations for Authors
- Series Writing: Given the commercial success of series, authors are encouraged to consider this format for their works.
- Diverse Representation: The call for diverse characters is not just about their presence but about integrating them into the fabric of the narrative in a natural, unforced manner.
- Direct to Consumer Sales: The growth in direct sales suggests authors should explore direct marketing and sales channels to enhance their earnings.
Conclusion
The conversation between Matty and Melissa provided a comprehensive overview of the current state of indie publishing, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decisions, the profitability of series, the significance of diversity and direct sales, and the positive outlook of indie authors on their publishing journey. The interview underscores the evolving landscape of indie publishing, where data, direct engagement with readers, and adaptability to market trends are crucial for success.
Transcript
Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Melissa Addy. Hey Melissa, how are you doing?
Melissa: Hey Matty, I'm doing well. Thank you for having me.
Meet Melissa Addey
Matty: It is lovely to have you here to give our listeners and viewers a little background on you. Melissa Addy is the Alliance of Independent Authors Campaigns Manager, focusing on Ethics and Excellence in Self-Publishing, as well as an author of historical fiction set in China, Morocco, and Ancient Rome. Melissa was also a past guest on the podcast in episode 150, "Hands Off Merchandising for Authors," and she was one of the contributors to my episode on "Podcasting Playbook: Navigating Guest Opportunities." That was episode 220. So, I invited Melissa back to talk about "The Big Indie Author Data Drop Report 2024."
The dearth of data related to indie publishing
Matty: So, this is something from the Alliance of Independent Authors. And I wanted to start out by asking you, Melissa, what made ALLi decide that this was something they should pursue?
Melissa: Well, it came about because there was a real dearth of data, facts, and figures on self-publishing. When I first started working with ALLi, coming from a business background, I already knew this. When I moved over into self-publishing, I wondered, "Where is the data?" In commercial life, you had to have the reports right there, and you had to have all the data in your head. If your CEO stopped you in the elevator and asked, "What are the sales like on this?" you had to have it all there, and it helped with making commercial decisions. So, I was like, "We need the data. Where is the data? How do you make proper decisions if you can't see what's happening? If it's all anecdotal, then you're never quite sure if you're just in a little bubble of your own and haven't realized what's happening on a larger scale."
Author Income Data
Melissa: And so, I started by doing the Indie Author Income Survey because one of the first things we didn't know was that we kept seeing author income surveys coming from all different parts of the world. They always indicated author income was declining. That didn't sound quite right. We were talking to many indie authors, and we also knew those surveys weren't easy for an indie author to answer because they were set up for a traditional author. Questions about your agent, your publisher, and your advance made it difficult for an indie author to participate. So, we conducted that survey last year, and the big news was that indie authors were making more money than those who were traditionally published. That was quite encouraging.
Not only were they making more, but the amount was also growing rapidly, at 53 percent year on year. That was amazing. That was ALLi's own survey, with over 2,000 authors responding. Later that same year, the Authors Guild released their figures, which absolutely correlated with ours.
So it absolutely matched that and agreed that was the case. That was a fantastic piece of information to have. Then we thought, okay, we've introduced new data, but surely there's more out there. Large organizations across self-publishing must have information, and if we compile it all together, we could have something substantial. We called this the Big Indie Author Data Drop, asking numerous organizations to share what they could. Last year's drop was amazing, providing loads of valuable data.
For example, 75 percent of books sold were in a series, both fiction and nonfiction. That's crucial information for an author to make an informed choice. Writing a standalone novel is fine—it's your creative right—but it's beneficial to know that series may be commercially advantageous. This gives you the right information to make choices. Some novels I write are standalone because that's what I want, and I'm content with that decision. However, I write others as a series because I know it's commercially smarter. Being informed in these choices is better than simply writing a standalone or series on a whim.
Last year was truly fascinating, and we've decided to conduct the Big Indie Author Data Drop annually. The income survey, however, will be every two years; it's unnecessary to do it annually when we can observe trends over time. We've just completed this year's drop in time for the London Book Fair, which has been exhausting. I wanted to share some of the fresh data that's emerged this year in various groups.
Matty: I had a question about the Income Survey, and since this was not our prepared topic, feel free to defer, but I've always imagined that if you took income information about indie authors and compared it with that of traditionally published authors, the graph for traditionally published authors would be much spikier. For example, a traditionally published author might see a large spike from an advance, followed by periods of little to no income.
I also thought it might be spikier in that a few at the top might earn vast amounts, quickly tapering off to poverty levels, which is where I would be, using magic as an analogy. Whereas for indie authors, I envisioned more of a bell curve distribution, with some earning a lot over time, others earning little, and many in the middle. Is that true? Or does your data suggest otherwise?
Melissa: That's a valid point. We tried to obtain comparable data, considering the various income surveys out there, like those from the Authors Guild, ALCS in the UK, Canada, and Australia. We aimed for alignment, ensuring that comparisons were fair. We focused on authors dedicating at least 50 percent of their time to writing and publishing. This does exclude a segment of authors, notably those who self-publish a single book, such as a memoir. We felt that including these would skew the comparison, as many people publish one-offs.
They just publish a book for their family, and that's all they ever wanted to do. And that's a difficult thing to bring into the mix. So it eliminated that and people who were just starting out because we were trying to align them to the ALCS one in the UK, which was using 50%.
The Author's Guild uses primarily full-time authors, so they report more on the full-time ones. We were trying to align somewhere like that. It is tricky to line up the data, which kind of eliminated the spike that you're talking about for the traditionally published authors. These are people who spend quite a lot of their time on this.
By this time, things like advances should have evened out a bit more because they should be getting advances, royalties, and other income streams like festivals, appearances, and book signings. That should have evened out a bit for them.
For our study, we took the median, not the mean. I had to refresh my math on this. We didn't calculate the mean, which would be to take everyone's income and distribute it back out against the number of people you had. We calculated the median, which is the middle of a range of numbers. It's the number most likely to be true for the largest group of people.
This method removes the outliers. It excludes people making multimillions and those at zero to determine what would be the most likely income for someone spending 50% of their time on this.
So, this methodology kind of evened out both aspects. It is tricky, though, really tricky to get it right. Going forward, it will be easier because we'll be able to match our data to our own, rather than comparing it to someone else's, which is always more challenging.
Thank you. I appreciate that, especially coming from someone who considers themselves non-mathematical. It's important to me that the explanation makes sense.
Matty: What were some of the most illuminating commercial insights you found that you would want to share with indie authors?
Melissa: There are three major observations I made. First, libraries are seeing a 45% increase in their revenue. For those involved with libraries, this is a significant growth area. I believe this is happening because the pathway into libraries is becoming more streamlined. Libraries are getting more accustomed to indie authors. At the beginning, there were outliers and uncertainties, but now, the process and logistics have smoothed out. Libraries are adapting to indies quickly. According to data from Draft2Digital, this is a rapidly growing area. Indie authors should explore how to get their works into libraries. That's the first point.
Melissa: The second interesting trend is the growing interest of readers in stories with diverse characters, especially among Gen Z. This younger generation is actively seeking stories that reflect their own diverse experiences and identities.
I apologize for misunderstanding your request. Here's the corrected text with direct edits for spelling, grammar, and formatting, without summarization:
Gen Zs are readers
Melissa: And I thought that was a really interesting thing to see because not only are Gen Z interested in those diverse stories, but they're really into reading. So the Gen Zs, there's been a whole spate of stories recently.
They, 40 percent of them, read every day. And I think more than 50 percent of them are reading several times a week. They like going to libraries to socialize instead of coffee shops and such. They enjoy those spaces. Possibly also because libraries, in more recent years, have really stopped being the kind of shush, shush, shush kind of place and have opened up a bit.
They have bars, they have cafes, they have spaces where you can network and talk, and nobody's going to go shush, shush, shush to you. My local library has a big networking sort of space, and they say, "Oh, we open it up for kids to come and study." So they'll come into the library, and they'll study together.
And then they're making friends and they're talking to people. And they said, it's really nice to watch that. And of course, then they're surrounded by books, and then they get more into the kind of book vibe generally. So it's quite nice to know that there's this young generation who are really into reading because presumably they're going to take that through with them, and you have to hope that the Gen Alphas that are going to be next up after them are going to continue that pathway.
So for authors, it's a fascinating thing to know that you've got an upcoming, very interested in reading group who are searching for those diverse stories. So not only do they want lots of books, but they also want them to have diverse characters in them.
Melissa: The other thing that's interesting is they like paperbacks. They want the bookiness of it. So that's interesting as well because we all went ebooks, ebooks, eBooks. They’re now kind of pushing a bit of an interest in paperbacks. And I think perhaps some of that's something to do with the physicality of it. So, things like TikTok, you have people with books in the background, holding up the books. It becomes a prop, an actual product that you talk about and interact with physically. So, I really liked that. I thought that was an interesting thing for people to think about.
And when they say diverse stories, I was chairing a panel at the London Book Fair talking with various authors about this, and it's not so much that we want diverse characters and we have to just focus on what their diversity is. It's diverse characters just doing their ordinary lives. They just want to see regular life with the diverse characters doing the regular stuff. And I think that opens it up to far more authors really because it stops being about, are you in a position to write that diverse author? Well, I am if they're running a bakery and they're just focusing on the bakery running of it.
That's what they're there for. They're not there to investigate every aspect of their diversity. They're just running their normal life. And I think that is a really important and quite positive thing for all authors to think about. Are you including diverse characters who are just getting on with their lives like the rest of your characters are doing? Put everybody in there together. That's what life's like out there. So that's a nice thing to know.
Acting on the data
Matty: It does seem like all of those are things that one would easily want to act on, such as the popularity of libraries, ensuring your books are available to libraries, and offering craft tips about diversity and evolving perspectives on what diversity means. If people are loving paperbacks, make sure they are available in paperbacks. If direct sales are proving to be popular among readers, then tap into that.
Are there any cases where you were able to look at the data in a way that said, maybe those assumptions that you would make on the surface aren't necessarily true? Or data that would lead people to say, "Oh, this is something I should be doing less of"? I recognize that might be like two questions baked into one, but something beyond the typical "Oh, I see this is popular, I'm going to do it too" response.
Behavioral aspects of indie authors (it's not what I would have expected!)
Melissa: Interesting. One thing that was interesting from the first round of data we did was about Holly Greenland, who is actually our blog manager at ALLi, doing her PhD on the behavioral aspects of self-published authors. She was trying to see if there are certain behaviors or characteristics of authors that make them more or less likely to be successful.
And the one characteristic that came up as being linked to success, so none of them were linking except for this one thing, which was not being amiable. I was like, "Sorry, what?" And she's like, "Yeah, self-published, successful authors are not amiable people." We really laughed about that, but then we kind of broke it up a bit.
We're thinking, what is that about? I mean, really, it's about having a bit of stubbornness. It's keeping going on the days when you get a crappy review or when there's another thousand words to write or the editor sent you back something and you got to do all that work.
It's keeping going. It's not always being nice. It's not always everything being sweetie pie and hunky-dory. Sometimes you got to be a bit stubborn and have a thick skin and keep plodding on. And I just thought that was quite funny sometimes. I thought on the days when you feel like you've been too abrupt with someone because you have to keep your word count or whatever.
Sometimes you have to not be as amiable, and I just thought that was a funny thing. So that was a fun one that came out.
Indie authors are positive about indie publishing
Melissa: On the whole, what was interesting was that self-published authors are very positive about self-publishing. Ninety-three percent of them were saying it is a positive experience for me.
That's a very high percentage in an area where we know it's not easy. You have to work pretty hard at it. But the positivity was a really interesting aspect for me because I thought people could say, "It's really hard" or "It takes a long time to get things moving."
But actually, the overall response and feedback on how they feel about self-publishing was very positive. So that was good to know—that it's overall a positive experience for indie authors.
Matty: What you were saying about amiability is, I think, especially funny because of any profession I've ever worked with, I think indie authors are among the most generous. So, that lack of amiability, the examples you gave totally make sense to me, but,
Melissa: On the surface, it sounds quite funny. It sounds like this must be this terrible, curmudgeonly group of people, but they're not. Like you say, they're very generous, very open-hearted about sharing what's worked for them, what they think might work for others, cheering each other on, all of that. But somewhere at the core, there must be a core of non-amiableness that keeps you going on the tough days, I think.
The other thing that's come out that's really interesting is that younger authors, the under 45s, are now making self-publishing their first choice. It is not plan B anymore. It's not, "Well, I tried traditional publishing, and it didn't work, or I couldn't get the agent, the publisher, whatever."
And the reasons why—Authors Guild found that, but also in Holly's work, she was finding that when there was a list of reasons why authors chose self-publishing, a lot of it was around creative control and the higher royalties. And "I couldn't find an agent, or I couldn't find a publisher" was really low down on the list.
That was beginning to show that actually more and more people are informed about all the options available to them and are choosing self-publishing, which is a good thing to know. This is presumably also helped by the fact that other indie authors who are already in the game are being positive about it.
Indie and trad is no longer an either/or
Matty: And I think that these kinds of collections of data will either become more complicated or less complicated depending, or maybe both. In the past, there used to be a very clear divide: indie versus traditional, or I'll even say self-publishing versus traditional. I don't like the phrase self-publishing, but that's what it was.
It was yourself or it was a company. And I think, especially as authors start doing both, you know, the idea that someone is not just an indie author, but someone who has chosen an indie route for this particular book and when the next book or series comes along, they're going to make a business decision about that book or series.
And that focus on what you're doing with a particular piece of content, not what you're doing with your entire writing career. Do you think that will make it easier or more difficult to gather and assess this kind of data?
Melissa: Well, it's harder to gather the data because, even book sales, which are still not being tracked by the big book tracking organizations, are a struggle because you can't just go by the ISBNs, just track them. Some people aren't using the ISBNs, and some people are selling direct.
So, there's a lot of lost data out there, which is a bit of a shame. On the other hand, I think as people get better at self-reporting, so they're more able to go, "Well, I do this and this and this." If you can follow what the big trends are, then you know the right questions to ask.
We now know that we need to be including that selling direct data in there, because that's going to become quite a significant part of the information out there. So that is part of why we went direct to authors, because we thought, actually, there's a lot. It's no good anymore just asking a particular platform.
A particular platform can give you a big picture of what's a big trend happening, but you will never get the full picture of what an author is making, except from that author. So, yeah, it's complicated, but if you're watching the trends, it does help you to ask the right question and hopefully to gather the right data, which is always a useful thing to do, I think.
Matty: Were there any other insights you got in addition to the treatment of diverse characters, the inclusion of diverse characters that were more craft focused? Well, I guess, in a sense, that thing about standalone versus series is sort of a combination of craft and business, just as you were saying.
Trends in KU
Melissa: Yeah, there's an ongoing thing around going wide and Kindle Unlimited, which every time I see data, I think, "Right, for once and for all, I will definitely see which way to go." And every time, it's like, "Well, there's a lot of info on this, and there's a lot of info on that." And I'm like, "Oh, listen back to it again."
I mean, on the one hand, Kindlepreneur and K-lytics both did some interesting data on Kindle Unlimited, and they were talking about how Kindle Unlimited has a lot of the big best-selling books. So when you look at the top 400 that is happening with Amazon every year, a huge and growing percentage of those are part of Kindle Unlimited. That, though, does not tell you what's kind of hot and new, which is sort of the point of Kindle Unlimited.
The power of the backlist
Melissa: The point is to have exclusivity of the new stuff that comes out. But it doesn't, of course, take care of what's happening with all the back catalogue.
And as a lot of us know, the back catalogue is where a lot of the money is in the long term, because every new book is only new for a very short period of time, and then it moves into the back catalogue, and that's got a really long running tail to it. And actually, I think indies do much better with their back catalogues because they don't just focus on that launch.
They don't go, "It's the make or break for three months and then that's it." Like, well, no, that's your launch bit. And then after that, it's got a long life. It's got a long life after you're dead. So, you know, never mind the bit where you're still alive and can look after it and make it interesting.
That would be a really interesting thing to see studies on how much money the backlist of a traditionally published author makes, maybe in comparison to an author who is in the indie ranks.
Matty: But I would bet exactly what you're saying, like, when I describe the four C's of indie publishing, they are creativity, control, care, and cash, and the care is care of the backlist, because I feel intuitively that that is true, a benefit that indie authors have over traditionally published authors, but I don't know that I've ever seen any data about that.
Melissa: No, that's an interesting one to think about. And I love the idea of back catalogs and also what happens after you're dead. I mean, we asked a whole load of it. It was part of the author income survey. And it was only a quarter of them had a will which mentioned their literary estate in any way, shape, or form.
And, you know, you think that's 70 years of sales if someone were looking after it. I do like to talk about this sort of thing. Georgette Heyer, a big romance Regency author, has been dead now for 50 years, still with 20 years left to run. If you watch how her back catalogue is being managed, it's really clever.
You see how the covers are changed regularly, how the quotes on the front, the kind of testimonials, if you like, are updated—they change up who's saying them so that it's someone new and relevant and not someone you've never heard of who apparently was a big deal back when it was first published.
Every time "Bridgerton" comes out, a new series, whoa, the sales spike for the whole of the historical category. Lord knows what they're like for Georgette Heyer. Here, they must really spike anything. Someone is doing a very good job of looking after that back catalogue, which you could have just let sink.
You could have just gone, "Well, whatever." But no, there's a lot of books there and someone's doing a really good job looking after them. And I think all indie authors should have a little bit of a think about what's going to happen later on in life and what's going to happen when they die and what will happen to their literary estate.
And go have a look at Georgette Heyer. Go see how well you can look after a series and what kind of money that might make for your estate. I think it's...
Matty: I think it was a conversation that I either had with Orna or Michael LaRon about this very thing, and I was saying it seems as if there's a maybe newish profession within the indie author sphere of people whose entire job is to take care of your books either after you've died or maybe even just after you've stopped wanting to muck around in it, and you want somebody else to take care of it, kind of like an agent.
I actually just talked to David Morris, who is an agent, but he's a very forward-thinking agent who is welcoming of what the indie publishing industry brings, and I think that he's doing somewhat different things for his clients, depending on what their publishing approach is, obviously, but that there is this specialty of taking care of books after the author is either not there anymore to do it themselves or just not interested in doing it themselves anymore.
Melissa: Yeah. Oh, I think there's a lot of scope for that and I don't think it's quite taken off yet, but like you say, it should really. At ALLi, we have two books for our members which are all about how to write that literary estate and a sort of handbook for your heirs to go here.
This is what you do when someone leaves you a pile of books and you're supposed to take care of them. But I think that's definitely a publishing service that could develop because when you get older and you semi-retire, you should write yourself a kind of process Bible that says, this is how often you should update the covers, this is the target audience.
The power of a solid foundation
Matty: Well, there was one other, I'm going to hold it for the moment because I think it would be a good wrap-up comment, but were there any other things that struck you and especially things that you saw losing popularity in the sense that you would want to alert indie authors that maybe this is something that they shouldn't be keeping at the top of their priority list anymore?
Melissa: That's a good question. I have not seen things going down. It just all goes up to do more and more things all the time. I said this to one of them the other day, and I was like, "There's always something else to do." And yes, there is always something else to do.
I have not seen anything really going down. I think, and you sort of slightly touched on that just before. I think authors who grow find more and more interesting income streams and platforms and outlets for what they're doing, and not only do they find things like, you know, at the beginning, we say to everyone, you must have a mailing list.
You must have subscribers. You must, you know, and at the beginning, it may seem like, well, I'm not sure they're really doing anything. This doesn't seem to be whatever, but actually, Kindlepreneur showed that selling direct was a lot better the more subscribers you had on your list. They literally had a chart showing you have this many subscribers.
You get this much money. You have this many subscribers. So that was an interesting one. and then also, I think, things like Kickstarter and Patreon become bigger the more you're linking, the more you've got those subscribers, the more you've got those different projects to play with. And then you start getting into, as you were saying, what do you do with each book that comes out or each series that comes out?
What pathway do you take for it? And it isn't even just Shall I go trad, or shall I go indie? It's even more split up than that. It's what shall I do with the paperback? What shall I do with the audiobook? What shall I do with? And it's each individual format you can tease out more and more into all its different component parts and think to yourself, what happens to the licensing rights for each one of those?
Do I look after them? Do I hand them over to someone else? Shall I do, you know, and that, that means that the more successful you are, the more options you have to split out into those tiny parts. Rather than the old model of here, you have everything, and you sort it out. That's a really old model now.
I don't think many people do that anymore. And certainly not the successful people. They're really splitting it down to the fine details, and each one of those, they're considering, would it be better this route, or would it be better that route? And I think that is where the success comes from is really thinking through all your options for each potential, you know, creative use of that IP.
Acting on the data
Matty: Yeah, I think this idea that every report seems to put more work on the indie publisher's plate and not take much away is just the nature of a still maturing and growing career in the industry. But I can see an analogy where, you know, I think we've gotten past the point where, and this is one of the reasons I don't like the term 'self-publishing,' because it sounds like a terrible thing.
You're doing it all yourself. And I think most professional indie publishers now recognize that they are wordsmiths, not visual design professionals. So, they should really get a visual design professional to produce their cover. Nobody can effectively edit their own work.
So they really need to get a professional editor. I know for myself, I just know I'm not a numbers person. So I finally got to a point with my business where I said, I'm just going to hire somebody else to take care of it for me because I recognize I'm never going to be able to handle that side of things as effectively as I could.
And I think that what is now a growing pool of data sort of suggests another area where people maybe need more help because I see lots of pieces of data about this is becoming more popular, this is becoming less popular, 57 percent of authors are doing such and such. And a lot of times my response is, that's fascinating, but I have no idea how to act on that.
Beyond the obvious things like, oh, yeah, I should still offer a paperback book. And, you know, this is another way I can imagine there could be an evolving profession out there that is, I'm looking at the pool of data and now I'm boiling it down for you and I'm saying, you know, I understand the details, but this is how you should act on it.
Do you have recommendations for people who are looking, not just to understand the data better, but then to understand how they should be acting on it?
Melissa: Well, two things. One is, download the report that we've done and have a look at it because we've made it so readable. It is very, very readable. It is, lots of pictures. That sounds so patronizing. No, but it's broken up. It is not a report that just goes on and on and you're going, "Where is the bit that I'm supposed to..." it's not like that.
It's very much, here's a headline figure, have a think about that now. There's another headline thing. Think about that now. And it's very much designed to be very readable and to take stuff away from it, clear directions from it. Not just go, "Lots of things are happening. Oh my God, that means there's lots more things to do."
Seeing the bigger picture (not just the shiny objects)
Melissa: The other thing I think is really important for all indie authors is to know where you're at and to do the bit that's appropriate for where you're at. I meet people and they're like, "Oh my God, they've only just started and they go, 'Oh my God, all the things that you've done.' And I'm like, but I've been doing this for nine years, nine years."
So if you're looking at my stuff and starting to panic, and I'm not even the superstars, you shouldn't be panicking because I had one book and I had 12 subscribers on my list, and one of them was my dad, and then he unsubscribed like, hello. And you know, it looks all swish when you look at the people ahead of you, you need to slow it down a little bit and do a little bit at a time. But if you have the guidance, it does help you because if you know, if right away you get told it would be helpful to you to write in a series. So just consider that each time you sit down with a new book, think about whether it could be a series.
From a creative point of view, do whatever you like, but know that this would be beneficial to you. And then, you know, know that it's good to have a mailing list and subscribers. When someone then says, "Well, you should be selling direct," and you think, "Oh my God, that's another thing that I need to set up."
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If it's panicking you, wait a little bit because the logistics will get smoother as they always do when something new comes in. And also, while the logistics are getting smoother, you can be building up your subscribers and your books, which the Kindlepreneur people have clearly shown will make it a lot easier when you go into the direct sale.
So rather than panic and think you must do everything, think about where am I at right now? What would be the best thing for me to be putting in place so that when I get to that next bit, it will make it easier for me? I always, you know, when I talk to brand new authors, I'm always like, "Let's get the foundations right."
Do not go rushing off and trying to do something that you think looks all shiny and whatever. Let's get the foundations right because then when you stand on those, they'll be nice and solid under you. Don't build some crumbly plastic thing, build something good and solid with bricks, you know, and then it will be easier at the next level.
And I think that happens all the way through. We are all guilty of, I do all the time, you look at the people up, up, up, up, up above you and you go, "Oh my God, how did they do that? Oh, oh, and I'm never going to catch up. Oh, and I should do all these things." But actually just think about where you've got to so far.
And, logically, what would be the next good thing to, to move up to? I do like having data because otherwise, I think you, you're just looking at the shiny stuff and you think you need to do all of that immediately. If you have the data in front of you, you can go, "Okay, it looks like that's a good thing to be doing. How would I get one step closer to that?"
Matty: Yeah. My author friends will laugh because I'm currently on a campaign to get people to stop saying "just," and one of them is, "I'm just going to self-publish it." And I was like, okay, that pains me for so many reasons. But the other thing I hear is that I think that we're surrounded by the superstar stories.
And if we're talking about email newsletter subscribers, then, you know, the "I only have 12 subscribers," it's, no, you have 12 subscribers. You can't expect to sell a thousand books off the 12 subscribers, but, you know, you have 12 subscribers, and I've even heard people saying like, "Oh, I only have 15,000 subscribers," and I'm like, That really makes me feel like lying down and taking a nap, you know, because now, it's like inciting comparisonitis. Now you've seen what the superstar is doing, and you think, "Oh, well, obviously I should have 15,000 subscribers," and so, I think a real benefit of having the data and not just the window dressing can really help people make more realistic assessments of their career and where they want to head it.
Melissa: Yes, yes, I think so. And I think that it allows you to see the bigger picture, to go, "Okay, this is what's happening, you know, the median amount of money is this. Okay, where do I stand in relation to that? What does it look like those authors are doing? And what could I do to move forward? Closer towards that."
It's just a little bit at a time. People always have a funny way of looking at being an author compared to any other job. And I'm always like, but it's like any other job. You don't take someone straight out of school, stuff them in a job and then come back a year later and go, "Why are you not the CEO?"
Why would you be the CEO? You're making coffee for everyone and doing what you're told and doing the photocopying, you know. After a bit you'll get a little bit better and a little bit better and if I come back in 10 years then it would be reasonable to say, "How are you getting on and have you been promoted a couple of times and what have you got your eye on for the future?"
I don't expect to come back and hear that you're the CEO because even after 10 years that'd be something. I mean, you have to have a sense of comparing it to a real job. It's a real job. It's not, we have too many shiny star stories, I think, and not enough middle stories. I like the middle stories.
I like the ones where you're making the same money you were making in whatever job it was you did before you became an indie author. To me, that is a big success story because you managed to equal or go above that salary. That's great. The super million whatevers, I mean, that's wonderful too, but that's a whole other thing. It's about is it a real job? The more you think of it as a real job, the better.
Matty: And I think that people should separate in their minds the aspirational goals without denigrating what they've done. So if you have 12 email subscribers, then of course you probably want 20, but you shouldn't be denigrating the fact that you have 12 on your way to...
Melissa: And also, yeah, but also the fact that you have 12, that means you must have set up a website and a mailing list and you got some people to sign up. You've probably got some kind of reader magnet or something that's getting them onto that list because they don't just sign up for nothing. So actually that must mean an awful lot of your foundational stones are getting in place because otherwise that wouldn't have happened at all, and I think you panic less over time.
Matty: Yes, we've morphed from data discussion to therapy for independent publishers.
Melissa: There should be a podcast that is therapy published on this. There really should be.
Matty: Today's caller is worried that they only have 15,000 email subscribers.
Melissa: Yeah, today's caller is crying because their dad doesn't subscribe from their 12 subscribers. We have to talk them down, you know.
Matty: Well, Melissa, always so lovely to talk to you, as I think our listeners can tell, and I'm sure people are going to be intrigued by this report, so where can they go to download their own copy of the report?
Melissa: Absolutely, so it's at allianceindependentauthors.org/facts and you will find there both the very latest one but also scroll down the page a little bit further you'll see notices to it and get last year's one as well because we tried not to repeat, we didn't just repeat the data, we put all new data and last year's one is just as worth reading as this year's.
Matty: Thank you so much.
Melissa: Thank you, Matty. Always a pleasure.
Melissa: Hey Matty, I'm doing well. Thank you for having me.
Meet Melissa Addey
Matty: It is lovely to have you here to give our listeners and viewers a little background on you. Melissa Addy is the Alliance of Independent Authors Campaigns Manager, focusing on Ethics and Excellence in Self-Publishing, as well as an author of historical fiction set in China, Morocco, and Ancient Rome. Melissa was also a past guest on the podcast in episode 150, "Hands Off Merchandising for Authors," and she was one of the contributors to my episode on "Podcasting Playbook: Navigating Guest Opportunities." That was episode 220. So, I invited Melissa back to talk about "The Big Indie Author Data Drop Report 2024."
The dearth of data related to indie publishing
Matty: So, this is something from the Alliance of Independent Authors. And I wanted to start out by asking you, Melissa, what made ALLi decide that this was something they should pursue?
Melissa: Well, it came about because there was a real dearth of data, facts, and figures on self-publishing. When I first started working with ALLi, coming from a business background, I already knew this. When I moved over into self-publishing, I wondered, "Where is the data?" In commercial life, you had to have the reports right there, and you had to have all the data in your head. If your CEO stopped you in the elevator and asked, "What are the sales like on this?" you had to have it all there, and it helped with making commercial decisions. So, I was like, "We need the data. Where is the data? How do you make proper decisions if you can't see what's happening? If it's all anecdotal, then you're never quite sure if you're just in a little bubble of your own and haven't realized what's happening on a larger scale."
Author Income Data
Melissa: And so, I started by doing the Indie Author Income Survey because one of the first things we didn't know was that we kept seeing author income surveys coming from all different parts of the world. They always indicated author income was declining. That didn't sound quite right. We were talking to many indie authors, and we also knew those surveys weren't easy for an indie author to answer because they were set up for a traditional author. Questions about your agent, your publisher, and your advance made it difficult for an indie author to participate. So, we conducted that survey last year, and the big news was that indie authors were making more money than those who were traditionally published. That was quite encouraging.
Not only were they making more, but the amount was also growing rapidly, at 53 percent year on year. That was amazing. That was ALLi's own survey, with over 2,000 authors responding. Later that same year, the Authors Guild released their figures, which absolutely correlated with ours.
So it absolutely matched that and agreed that was the case. That was a fantastic piece of information to have. Then we thought, okay, we've introduced new data, but surely there's more out there. Large organizations across self-publishing must have information, and if we compile it all together, we could have something substantial. We called this the Big Indie Author Data Drop, asking numerous organizations to share what they could. Last year's drop was amazing, providing loads of valuable data.
For example, 75 percent of books sold were in a series, both fiction and nonfiction. That's crucial information for an author to make an informed choice. Writing a standalone novel is fine—it's your creative right—but it's beneficial to know that series may be commercially advantageous. This gives you the right information to make choices. Some novels I write are standalone because that's what I want, and I'm content with that decision. However, I write others as a series because I know it's commercially smarter. Being informed in these choices is better than simply writing a standalone or series on a whim.
Last year was truly fascinating, and we've decided to conduct the Big Indie Author Data Drop annually. The income survey, however, will be every two years; it's unnecessary to do it annually when we can observe trends over time. We've just completed this year's drop in time for the London Book Fair, which has been exhausting. I wanted to share some of the fresh data that's emerged this year in various groups.
Matty: I had a question about the Income Survey, and since this was not our prepared topic, feel free to defer, but I've always imagined that if you took income information about indie authors and compared it with that of traditionally published authors, the graph for traditionally published authors would be much spikier. For example, a traditionally published author might see a large spike from an advance, followed by periods of little to no income.
I also thought it might be spikier in that a few at the top might earn vast amounts, quickly tapering off to poverty levels, which is where I would be, using magic as an analogy. Whereas for indie authors, I envisioned more of a bell curve distribution, with some earning a lot over time, others earning little, and many in the middle. Is that true? Or does your data suggest otherwise?
Melissa: That's a valid point. We tried to obtain comparable data, considering the various income surveys out there, like those from the Authors Guild, ALCS in the UK, Canada, and Australia. We aimed for alignment, ensuring that comparisons were fair. We focused on authors dedicating at least 50 percent of their time to writing and publishing. This does exclude a segment of authors, notably those who self-publish a single book, such as a memoir. We felt that including these would skew the comparison, as many people publish one-offs.
They just publish a book for their family, and that's all they ever wanted to do. And that's a difficult thing to bring into the mix. So it eliminated that and people who were just starting out because we were trying to align them to the ALCS one in the UK, which was using 50%.
The Author's Guild uses primarily full-time authors, so they report more on the full-time ones. We were trying to align somewhere like that. It is tricky to line up the data, which kind of eliminated the spike that you're talking about for the traditionally published authors. These are people who spend quite a lot of their time on this.
By this time, things like advances should have evened out a bit more because they should be getting advances, royalties, and other income streams like festivals, appearances, and book signings. That should have evened out a bit for them.
For our study, we took the median, not the mean. I had to refresh my math on this. We didn't calculate the mean, which would be to take everyone's income and distribute it back out against the number of people you had. We calculated the median, which is the middle of a range of numbers. It's the number most likely to be true for the largest group of people.
This method removes the outliers. It excludes people making multimillions and those at zero to determine what would be the most likely income for someone spending 50% of their time on this.
So, this methodology kind of evened out both aspects. It is tricky, though, really tricky to get it right. Going forward, it will be easier because we'll be able to match our data to our own, rather than comparing it to someone else's, which is always more challenging.
Thank you. I appreciate that, especially coming from someone who considers themselves non-mathematical. It's important to me that the explanation makes sense.
Matty: What were some of the most illuminating commercial insights you found that you would want to share with indie authors?
Melissa: There are three major observations I made. First, libraries are seeing a 45% increase in their revenue. For those involved with libraries, this is a significant growth area. I believe this is happening because the pathway into libraries is becoming more streamlined. Libraries are getting more accustomed to indie authors. At the beginning, there were outliers and uncertainties, but now, the process and logistics have smoothed out. Libraries are adapting to indies quickly. According to data from Draft2Digital, this is a rapidly growing area. Indie authors should explore how to get their works into libraries. That's the first point.
Melissa: The second interesting trend is the growing interest of readers in stories with diverse characters, especially among Gen Z. This younger generation is actively seeking stories that reflect their own diverse experiences and identities.
I apologize for misunderstanding your request. Here's the corrected text with direct edits for spelling, grammar, and formatting, without summarization:
Gen Zs are readers
Melissa: And I thought that was a really interesting thing to see because not only are Gen Z interested in those diverse stories, but they're really into reading. So the Gen Zs, there's been a whole spate of stories recently.
They, 40 percent of them, read every day. And I think more than 50 percent of them are reading several times a week. They like going to libraries to socialize instead of coffee shops and such. They enjoy those spaces. Possibly also because libraries, in more recent years, have really stopped being the kind of shush, shush, shush kind of place and have opened up a bit.
They have bars, they have cafes, they have spaces where you can network and talk, and nobody's going to go shush, shush, shush to you. My local library has a big networking sort of space, and they say, "Oh, we open it up for kids to come and study." So they'll come into the library, and they'll study together.
And then they're making friends and they're talking to people. And they said, it's really nice to watch that. And of course, then they're surrounded by books, and then they get more into the kind of book vibe generally. So it's quite nice to know that there's this young generation who are really into reading because presumably they're going to take that through with them, and you have to hope that the Gen Alphas that are going to be next up after them are going to continue that pathway.
So for authors, it's a fascinating thing to know that you've got an upcoming, very interested in reading group who are searching for those diverse stories. So not only do they want lots of books, but they also want them to have diverse characters in them.
Melissa: The other thing that's interesting is they like paperbacks. They want the bookiness of it. So that's interesting as well because we all went ebooks, ebooks, eBooks. They’re now kind of pushing a bit of an interest in paperbacks. And I think perhaps some of that's something to do with the physicality of it. So, things like TikTok, you have people with books in the background, holding up the books. It becomes a prop, an actual product that you talk about and interact with physically. So, I really liked that. I thought that was an interesting thing for people to think about.
And when they say diverse stories, I was chairing a panel at the London Book Fair talking with various authors about this, and it's not so much that we want diverse characters and we have to just focus on what their diversity is. It's diverse characters just doing their ordinary lives. They just want to see regular life with the diverse characters doing the regular stuff. And I think that opens it up to far more authors really because it stops being about, are you in a position to write that diverse author? Well, I am if they're running a bakery and they're just focusing on the bakery running of it.
That's what they're there for. They're not there to investigate every aspect of their diversity. They're just running their normal life. And I think that is a really important and quite positive thing for all authors to think about. Are you including diverse characters who are just getting on with their lives like the rest of your characters are doing? Put everybody in there together. That's what life's like out there. So that's a nice thing to know.
Acting on the data
Matty: It does seem like all of those are things that one would easily want to act on, such as the popularity of libraries, ensuring your books are available to libraries, and offering craft tips about diversity and evolving perspectives on what diversity means. If people are loving paperbacks, make sure they are available in paperbacks. If direct sales are proving to be popular among readers, then tap into that.
Are there any cases where you were able to look at the data in a way that said, maybe those assumptions that you would make on the surface aren't necessarily true? Or data that would lead people to say, "Oh, this is something I should be doing less of"? I recognize that might be like two questions baked into one, but something beyond the typical "Oh, I see this is popular, I'm going to do it too" response.
Behavioral aspects of indie authors (it's not what I would have expected!)
Melissa: Interesting. One thing that was interesting from the first round of data we did was about Holly Greenland, who is actually our blog manager at ALLi, doing her PhD on the behavioral aspects of self-published authors. She was trying to see if there are certain behaviors or characteristics of authors that make them more or less likely to be successful.
And the one characteristic that came up as being linked to success, so none of them were linking except for this one thing, which was not being amiable. I was like, "Sorry, what?" And she's like, "Yeah, self-published, successful authors are not amiable people." We really laughed about that, but then we kind of broke it up a bit.
We're thinking, what is that about? I mean, really, it's about having a bit of stubbornness. It's keeping going on the days when you get a crappy review or when there's another thousand words to write or the editor sent you back something and you got to do all that work.
It's keeping going. It's not always being nice. It's not always everything being sweetie pie and hunky-dory. Sometimes you got to be a bit stubborn and have a thick skin and keep plodding on. And I just thought that was quite funny sometimes. I thought on the days when you feel like you've been too abrupt with someone because you have to keep your word count or whatever.
Sometimes you have to not be as amiable, and I just thought that was a funny thing. So that was a fun one that came out.
Indie authors are positive about indie publishing
Melissa: On the whole, what was interesting was that self-published authors are very positive about self-publishing. Ninety-three percent of them were saying it is a positive experience for me.
That's a very high percentage in an area where we know it's not easy. You have to work pretty hard at it. But the positivity was a really interesting aspect for me because I thought people could say, "It's really hard" or "It takes a long time to get things moving."
But actually, the overall response and feedback on how they feel about self-publishing was very positive. So that was good to know—that it's overall a positive experience for indie authors.
Matty: What you were saying about amiability is, I think, especially funny because of any profession I've ever worked with, I think indie authors are among the most generous. So, that lack of amiability, the examples you gave totally make sense to me, but,
Melissa: On the surface, it sounds quite funny. It sounds like this must be this terrible, curmudgeonly group of people, but they're not. Like you say, they're very generous, very open-hearted about sharing what's worked for them, what they think might work for others, cheering each other on, all of that. But somewhere at the core, there must be a core of non-amiableness that keeps you going on the tough days, I think.
The other thing that's come out that's really interesting is that younger authors, the under 45s, are now making self-publishing their first choice. It is not plan B anymore. It's not, "Well, I tried traditional publishing, and it didn't work, or I couldn't get the agent, the publisher, whatever."
And the reasons why—Authors Guild found that, but also in Holly's work, she was finding that when there was a list of reasons why authors chose self-publishing, a lot of it was around creative control and the higher royalties. And "I couldn't find an agent, or I couldn't find a publisher" was really low down on the list.
That was beginning to show that actually more and more people are informed about all the options available to them and are choosing self-publishing, which is a good thing to know. This is presumably also helped by the fact that other indie authors who are already in the game are being positive about it.
Indie and trad is no longer an either/or
Matty: And I think that these kinds of collections of data will either become more complicated or less complicated depending, or maybe both. In the past, there used to be a very clear divide: indie versus traditional, or I'll even say self-publishing versus traditional. I don't like the phrase self-publishing, but that's what it was.
It was yourself or it was a company. And I think, especially as authors start doing both, you know, the idea that someone is not just an indie author, but someone who has chosen an indie route for this particular book and when the next book or series comes along, they're going to make a business decision about that book or series.
And that focus on what you're doing with a particular piece of content, not what you're doing with your entire writing career. Do you think that will make it easier or more difficult to gather and assess this kind of data?
Melissa: Well, it's harder to gather the data because, even book sales, which are still not being tracked by the big book tracking organizations, are a struggle because you can't just go by the ISBNs, just track them. Some people aren't using the ISBNs, and some people are selling direct.
So, there's a lot of lost data out there, which is a bit of a shame. On the other hand, I think as people get better at self-reporting, so they're more able to go, "Well, I do this and this and this." If you can follow what the big trends are, then you know the right questions to ask.
We now know that we need to be including that selling direct data in there, because that's going to become quite a significant part of the information out there. So that is part of why we went direct to authors, because we thought, actually, there's a lot. It's no good anymore just asking a particular platform.
A particular platform can give you a big picture of what's a big trend happening, but you will never get the full picture of what an author is making, except from that author. So, yeah, it's complicated, but if you're watching the trends, it does help you to ask the right question and hopefully to gather the right data, which is always a useful thing to do, I think.
Matty: Were there any other insights you got in addition to the treatment of diverse characters, the inclusion of diverse characters that were more craft focused? Well, I guess, in a sense, that thing about standalone versus series is sort of a combination of craft and business, just as you were saying.
Trends in KU
Melissa: Yeah, there's an ongoing thing around going wide and Kindle Unlimited, which every time I see data, I think, "Right, for once and for all, I will definitely see which way to go." And every time, it's like, "Well, there's a lot of info on this, and there's a lot of info on that." And I'm like, "Oh, listen back to it again."
I mean, on the one hand, Kindlepreneur and K-lytics both did some interesting data on Kindle Unlimited, and they were talking about how Kindle Unlimited has a lot of the big best-selling books. So when you look at the top 400 that is happening with Amazon every year, a huge and growing percentage of those are part of Kindle Unlimited. That, though, does not tell you what's kind of hot and new, which is sort of the point of Kindle Unlimited.
The power of the backlist
Melissa: The point is to have exclusivity of the new stuff that comes out. But it doesn't, of course, take care of what's happening with all the back catalogue.
And as a lot of us know, the back catalogue is where a lot of the money is in the long term, because every new book is only new for a very short period of time, and then it moves into the back catalogue, and that's got a really long running tail to it. And actually, I think indies do much better with their back catalogues because they don't just focus on that launch.
They don't go, "It's the make or break for three months and then that's it." Like, well, no, that's your launch bit. And then after that, it's got a long life. It's got a long life after you're dead. So, you know, never mind the bit where you're still alive and can look after it and make it interesting.
That would be a really interesting thing to see studies on how much money the backlist of a traditionally published author makes, maybe in comparison to an author who is in the indie ranks.
Matty: But I would bet exactly what you're saying, like, when I describe the four C's of indie publishing, they are creativity, control, care, and cash, and the care is care of the backlist, because I feel intuitively that that is true, a benefit that indie authors have over traditionally published authors, but I don't know that I've ever seen any data about that.
Melissa: No, that's an interesting one to think about. And I love the idea of back catalogs and also what happens after you're dead. I mean, we asked a whole load of it. It was part of the author income survey. And it was only a quarter of them had a will which mentioned their literary estate in any way, shape, or form.
And, you know, you think that's 70 years of sales if someone were looking after it. I do like to talk about this sort of thing. Georgette Heyer, a big romance Regency author, has been dead now for 50 years, still with 20 years left to run. If you watch how her back catalogue is being managed, it's really clever.
You see how the covers are changed regularly, how the quotes on the front, the kind of testimonials, if you like, are updated—they change up who's saying them so that it's someone new and relevant and not someone you've never heard of who apparently was a big deal back when it was first published.
Every time "Bridgerton" comes out, a new series, whoa, the sales spike for the whole of the historical category. Lord knows what they're like for Georgette Heyer. Here, they must really spike anything. Someone is doing a very good job of looking after that back catalogue, which you could have just let sink.
You could have just gone, "Well, whatever." But no, there's a lot of books there and someone's doing a really good job looking after them. And I think all indie authors should have a little bit of a think about what's going to happen later on in life and what's going to happen when they die and what will happen to their literary estate.
And go have a look at Georgette Heyer. Go see how well you can look after a series and what kind of money that might make for your estate. I think it's...
Matty: I think it was a conversation that I either had with Orna or Michael LaRon about this very thing, and I was saying it seems as if there's a maybe newish profession within the indie author sphere of people whose entire job is to take care of your books either after you've died or maybe even just after you've stopped wanting to muck around in it, and you want somebody else to take care of it, kind of like an agent.
I actually just talked to David Morris, who is an agent, but he's a very forward-thinking agent who is welcoming of what the indie publishing industry brings, and I think that he's doing somewhat different things for his clients, depending on what their publishing approach is, obviously, but that there is this specialty of taking care of books after the author is either not there anymore to do it themselves or just not interested in doing it themselves anymore.
Melissa: Yeah. Oh, I think there's a lot of scope for that and I don't think it's quite taken off yet, but like you say, it should really. At ALLi, we have two books for our members which are all about how to write that literary estate and a sort of handbook for your heirs to go here.
This is what you do when someone leaves you a pile of books and you're supposed to take care of them. But I think that's definitely a publishing service that could develop because when you get older and you semi-retire, you should write yourself a kind of process Bible that says, this is how often you should update the covers, this is the target audience.
The power of a solid foundation
Matty: Well, there was one other, I'm going to hold it for the moment because I think it would be a good wrap-up comment, but were there any other things that struck you and especially things that you saw losing popularity in the sense that you would want to alert indie authors that maybe this is something that they shouldn't be keeping at the top of their priority list anymore?
Melissa: That's a good question. I have not seen things going down. It just all goes up to do more and more things all the time. I said this to one of them the other day, and I was like, "There's always something else to do." And yes, there is always something else to do.
I have not seen anything really going down. I think, and you sort of slightly touched on that just before. I think authors who grow find more and more interesting income streams and platforms and outlets for what they're doing, and not only do they find things like, you know, at the beginning, we say to everyone, you must have a mailing list.
You must have subscribers. You must, you know, and at the beginning, it may seem like, well, I'm not sure they're really doing anything. This doesn't seem to be whatever, but actually, Kindlepreneur showed that selling direct was a lot better the more subscribers you had on your list. They literally had a chart showing you have this many subscribers.
You get this much money. You have this many subscribers. So that was an interesting one. and then also, I think, things like Kickstarter and Patreon become bigger the more you're linking, the more you've got those subscribers, the more you've got those different projects to play with. And then you start getting into, as you were saying, what do you do with each book that comes out or each series that comes out?
What pathway do you take for it? And it isn't even just Shall I go trad, or shall I go indie? It's even more split up than that. It's what shall I do with the paperback? What shall I do with the audiobook? What shall I do with? And it's each individual format you can tease out more and more into all its different component parts and think to yourself, what happens to the licensing rights for each one of those?
Do I look after them? Do I hand them over to someone else? Shall I do, you know, and that, that means that the more successful you are, the more options you have to split out into those tiny parts. Rather than the old model of here, you have everything, and you sort it out. That's a really old model now.
I don't think many people do that anymore. And certainly not the successful people. They're really splitting it down to the fine details, and each one of those, they're considering, would it be better this route, or would it be better that route? And I think that is where the success comes from is really thinking through all your options for each potential, you know, creative use of that IP.
Acting on the data
Matty: Yeah, I think this idea that every report seems to put more work on the indie publisher's plate and not take much away is just the nature of a still maturing and growing career in the industry. But I can see an analogy where, you know, I think we've gotten past the point where, and this is one of the reasons I don't like the term 'self-publishing,' because it sounds like a terrible thing.
You're doing it all yourself. And I think most professional indie publishers now recognize that they are wordsmiths, not visual design professionals. So, they should really get a visual design professional to produce their cover. Nobody can effectively edit their own work.
So they really need to get a professional editor. I know for myself, I just know I'm not a numbers person. So I finally got to a point with my business where I said, I'm just going to hire somebody else to take care of it for me because I recognize I'm never going to be able to handle that side of things as effectively as I could.
And I think that what is now a growing pool of data sort of suggests another area where people maybe need more help because I see lots of pieces of data about this is becoming more popular, this is becoming less popular, 57 percent of authors are doing such and such. And a lot of times my response is, that's fascinating, but I have no idea how to act on that.
Beyond the obvious things like, oh, yeah, I should still offer a paperback book. And, you know, this is another way I can imagine there could be an evolving profession out there that is, I'm looking at the pool of data and now I'm boiling it down for you and I'm saying, you know, I understand the details, but this is how you should act on it.
Do you have recommendations for people who are looking, not just to understand the data better, but then to understand how they should be acting on it?
Melissa: Well, two things. One is, download the report that we've done and have a look at it because we've made it so readable. It is very, very readable. It is, lots of pictures. That sounds so patronizing. No, but it's broken up. It is not a report that just goes on and on and you're going, "Where is the bit that I'm supposed to..." it's not like that.
It's very much, here's a headline figure, have a think about that now. There's another headline thing. Think about that now. And it's very much designed to be very readable and to take stuff away from it, clear directions from it. Not just go, "Lots of things are happening. Oh my God, that means there's lots more things to do."
Seeing the bigger picture (not just the shiny objects)
Melissa: The other thing I think is really important for all indie authors is to know where you're at and to do the bit that's appropriate for where you're at. I meet people and they're like, "Oh my God, they've only just started and they go, 'Oh my God, all the things that you've done.' And I'm like, but I've been doing this for nine years, nine years."
So if you're looking at my stuff and starting to panic, and I'm not even the superstars, you shouldn't be panicking because I had one book and I had 12 subscribers on my list, and one of them was my dad, and then he unsubscribed like, hello. And you know, it looks all swish when you look at the people ahead of you, you need to slow it down a little bit and do a little bit at a time. But if you have the guidance, it does help you because if you know, if right away you get told it would be helpful to you to write in a series. So just consider that each time you sit down with a new book, think about whether it could be a series.
From a creative point of view, do whatever you like, but know that this would be beneficial to you. And then, you know, know that it's good to have a mailing list and subscribers. When someone then says, "Well, you should be selling direct," and you think, "Oh my God, that's another thing that I need to set up."
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If it's panicking you, wait a little bit because the logistics will get smoother as they always do when something new comes in. And also, while the logistics are getting smoother, you can be building up your subscribers and your books, which the Kindlepreneur people have clearly shown will make it a lot easier when you go into the direct sale.
So rather than panic and think you must do everything, think about where am I at right now? What would be the best thing for me to be putting in place so that when I get to that next bit, it will make it easier for me? I always, you know, when I talk to brand new authors, I'm always like, "Let's get the foundations right."
Do not go rushing off and trying to do something that you think looks all shiny and whatever. Let's get the foundations right because then when you stand on those, they'll be nice and solid under you. Don't build some crumbly plastic thing, build something good and solid with bricks, you know, and then it will be easier at the next level.
And I think that happens all the way through. We are all guilty of, I do all the time, you look at the people up, up, up, up, up above you and you go, "Oh my God, how did they do that? Oh, oh, and I'm never going to catch up. Oh, and I should do all these things." But actually just think about where you've got to so far.
And, logically, what would be the next good thing to, to move up to? I do like having data because otherwise, I think you, you're just looking at the shiny stuff and you think you need to do all of that immediately. If you have the data in front of you, you can go, "Okay, it looks like that's a good thing to be doing. How would I get one step closer to that?"
Matty: Yeah. My author friends will laugh because I'm currently on a campaign to get people to stop saying "just," and one of them is, "I'm just going to self-publish it." And I was like, okay, that pains me for so many reasons. But the other thing I hear is that I think that we're surrounded by the superstar stories.
And if we're talking about email newsletter subscribers, then, you know, the "I only have 12 subscribers," it's, no, you have 12 subscribers. You can't expect to sell a thousand books off the 12 subscribers, but, you know, you have 12 subscribers, and I've even heard people saying like, "Oh, I only have 15,000 subscribers," and I'm like, That really makes me feel like lying down and taking a nap, you know, because now, it's like inciting comparisonitis. Now you've seen what the superstar is doing, and you think, "Oh, well, obviously I should have 15,000 subscribers," and so, I think a real benefit of having the data and not just the window dressing can really help people make more realistic assessments of their career and where they want to head it.
Melissa: Yes, yes, I think so. And I think that it allows you to see the bigger picture, to go, "Okay, this is what's happening, you know, the median amount of money is this. Okay, where do I stand in relation to that? What does it look like those authors are doing? And what could I do to move forward? Closer towards that."
It's just a little bit at a time. People always have a funny way of looking at being an author compared to any other job. And I'm always like, but it's like any other job. You don't take someone straight out of school, stuff them in a job and then come back a year later and go, "Why are you not the CEO?"
Why would you be the CEO? You're making coffee for everyone and doing what you're told and doing the photocopying, you know. After a bit you'll get a little bit better and a little bit better and if I come back in 10 years then it would be reasonable to say, "How are you getting on and have you been promoted a couple of times and what have you got your eye on for the future?"
I don't expect to come back and hear that you're the CEO because even after 10 years that'd be something. I mean, you have to have a sense of comparing it to a real job. It's a real job. It's not, we have too many shiny star stories, I think, and not enough middle stories. I like the middle stories.
I like the ones where you're making the same money you were making in whatever job it was you did before you became an indie author. To me, that is a big success story because you managed to equal or go above that salary. That's great. The super million whatevers, I mean, that's wonderful too, but that's a whole other thing. It's about is it a real job? The more you think of it as a real job, the better.
Matty: And I think that people should separate in their minds the aspirational goals without denigrating what they've done. So if you have 12 email subscribers, then of course you probably want 20, but you shouldn't be denigrating the fact that you have 12 on your way to...
Melissa: And also, yeah, but also the fact that you have 12, that means you must have set up a website and a mailing list and you got some people to sign up. You've probably got some kind of reader magnet or something that's getting them onto that list because they don't just sign up for nothing. So actually that must mean an awful lot of your foundational stones are getting in place because otherwise that wouldn't have happened at all, and I think you panic less over time.
Matty: Yes, we've morphed from data discussion to therapy for independent publishers.
Melissa: There should be a podcast that is therapy published on this. There really should be.
Matty: Today's caller is worried that they only have 15,000 email subscribers.
Melissa: Yeah, today's caller is crying because their dad doesn't subscribe from their 12 subscribers. We have to talk them down, you know.
Matty: Well, Melissa, always so lovely to talk to you, as I think our listeners can tell, and I'm sure people are going to be intrigued by this report, so where can they go to download their own copy of the report?
Melissa: Absolutely, so it's at allianceindependentauthors.org/facts and you will find there both the very latest one but also scroll down the page a little bit further you'll see notices to it and get last year's one as well because we tried not to repeat, we didn't just repeat the data, we put all new data and last year's one is just as worth reading as this year's.
Matty: Thank you so much.
Melissa: Thank you, Matty. Always a pleasure.
