RE: How to Write Your First Ebook in 7 Days or Less! Chapter 1
Stephen King, dude, not Larry King, wrote "Carrie". :)
Also, yeah, ebooks can be a way to make money, but the key is being prolific and staying in Amazon's "New Releases" algorithm, which is which you need to be able to pump out 10-15k words a week, which is usually the minimum. Because that kind of workload is strenuous, a lot of authors go with hiring ghostwriters for a penny a word. For a 10k word story, that's about $100, but if you've built up a fanbase, it can pay for it while keeping on schedule.
The unfortunate thing for writers is how easy it is to find ghostwriters, as a lot of them don't know, or are too nervous to ask what they're worth, or believe they'll never be published.
James Frey, the author of "A Million Little Pieces"? He takes advantage of that by going to MFA writing programs and hiring writers fresh out of grad school to write for "fiction factories", where writers are paid about $5-10k for their work, but he keeps all the rights, including film options, which is how the author of "I Am Number Four" got seriously screwed out of a lot of money.
Amazon is usually the route a lot of self-publishers want to go because of the "one click buy" on a customer's Kindle, so some authors are willing to take 65% royalties for that added convenience.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Good post!
When I ghost write a book, it's typically $5 to 7K, but they give me the whole structure in interviews. It usually breaks down to $75-$100 an hour when my part is all done. And, it's non-fiction. I don't think I could ghost write fiction. It's too personal for me.
BAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, I know Stephen King's work well, dude. I wrote this in one day originally, and never had it edited, so, I guess I've been reading Stephen in my head every time I've been over it. LOL Good catch. And no, that's not the only way to earn with Ebooks, and anyone only paying ghost writers $100, and I can seriously not be friends, because that is robbery. I get a minimum 10 cents a word, for crap I can write in my sleep. And, I have a list of dozens of authors that earn their livings from self-pubbed ebooks, with NOTHING on Amazon. It's all over the map. I think the only major author actually doing ghost writers any favors is James Patterson. Several of his collaborators have come out with an audience of their own, from what I've heard.
Yeah, I had a decent publisher until they closed down. I looked into small ebook presses that would take on new writers, but no one will take on a series in progress, which is why I started publishing myself in serial on Steemit. Unfortunately the only genre that really gets any traction is Romance, and that usually requires setting yourself in a niches, or doing commissioned NSFW stuff.
Until I find a steady income, I still have my day job teaching, so at least there's that. :)
I've got a buddy, 70 yrs old, retired engineer, writes traditional "space opera" scifi. He put his first novel on Amazon, made $20k on it the first year, get this, with no previous audience, no website, no social media presence, no email list. Now he's up to number 8 and his book sales are almost three times his retirement income, which he said is pretty comfortable. If I hadn't known him (Facebook) for three years and seen evidence of his total honesty, I'd think he wasn't sharing everything, but I can't find him anywhere, except on Amazon. So, you never know. Let me know if you'd like to chat about some possible collaboration. I'm working on several ideas. My fiction has been an uphill battle here for the last couple months. I'd like to try some interactive fiction. Most of the fiction getting decent payouts is doing so with paid votes, or on Adsactly, a big communal account that keeps about 3/4 of what the stories they share make. Just so you know, though, my fiction made me about $40k here last year. Now, if I could just get the books to go better. LOL
Find me on discord if you'd be interested in discussing something like that.
Most of the small indies want some money, in my experience, or don't have a marketing machine, so it's a wash, you might as well take 90%, or 97% like you get on Payhip.com if you have to sell your own books anyway.