If you’ve ever considered writing a book, you’ve undoubtedly questioned how you would publish it. Authors very frequently put the cart before the horse—and for good reason. There are a lot of differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing. When you know where you’re headed, you can make better progress toward your goal.
In my experience, the most common reason people want to pursue a traditional publishing contract is money (although most people don’t openly say that!). Many authors falsely believe that traditional publishing contracts come with huge marketing budgets. While that can be the case, it’s definitely not the most common scenario. No matter how you choose to publish, you’ll need a plan to promote and market your book.
And if you’re going to promote and market your book anyway, why not go it alone?
There are good reasons to choose traditional publishing. For one thing, a traditional publishing contract will (usually) give you access to excellent designers and editors without upfront fees. You’ll pay for these services on the back end, when book sales come in. And most traditional publishers can place your book in at least a few brick-and-mortar bookstores (or libraries or book fairs) which can be helpful for sales, assuming your book shows enough promise to grant it a prime spot (no, unfortunately, a traditional book contract does not guarantee you a big, fancy front-of-store display).
While there are definitely some sales advantages to publishing traditionally, the difference may be narrower than you think. And, although the question is typically posed in terms of “self-published authors,” most people are actually asking about how much they can make if they self-publish their book.
So how much profit can you earn from a self-published book?
An April 2023 study by the Alliance of Independent Authors found that the median earnings for self-published authors were $12,749. By comparison, the median income for traditionally published authors was less than half of that figure—$6,080.
The average income of self-published authors in 2022 was $82,600.
Now, there’s a huge caveat. As the study notes, the average is skewed by both very high earners and very low earners, which is the reason the study emphasized the median rather than the average. The question, then, is: will your book be a top earner or a bottom earner?
The following key factors can help you calculate your possible ROI (return on investment).
1. How much do self-published authors make on a single book sold?
The average per-book earnings for adult nonfiction book is $5-7.
But the calculation is more complicated than that.
Self-published authors choose their list price, but, of course, the market determines the reasonable range—go too high, and buyers will scroll on to the next option. Too low, and they won’t see the value. I suggest aiming for the average price in your book’s category. Self-help books, for example, tend to run around $14.
But, of course, that money won’t all come back to you unless you’re selling books out of your garage. If you plan to use Amazon’s Print-on-Demand service (called Kindle Direct Publishing), you’ll get back around $5.15 per copy in royalties. The $8.85 different goes to printing ($3.25) and distribution fees ($5.60).
That number might seem low. I feel you. But remember that, if you were publishing traditionally, your royalties would probably be in the 7% range—around a buck per copy sold.
You can certainly increase your profit if you choose to do an offset run, store the books in your basement or garage (make sure it’s dry in there!), and ship them yourself. In that case, you could earn $10-11 per copy. In fact, that’s exactly what we suggest if you’re planning to do a book tour.
eBooks can also increase your profit. A $10 eBook could bring in $7 in royalties if sold through Amazon…or $10 in royalties if sold on your own website!
When you think about one-off books, remember that the list price isn’t actually what you take home. That makes a big difference!
2. How big is your platform?
Traditional publishers (and agents) are very concerned about your platform (or, in other words, the size and engagement of your audience) for a good reason—the more engaged your followers, the more books you’re likely to sell.
Most estimates tell us that an email list with 2,000 people will likely sell 100-200 books at most, depending on how engaged your list is. That’s a profit of $1,030 if you sell paperbacks through Amazon or $2,000 if you sell eBooks directly through your own site.
Social media conversions are usually lower—somewhere around 1-2%—so unless you have a huge, very engaged Twitter following, expect those numbers to be quite a bit lower than the email launch numbers.
On the other hand, if you’ve found that your followers are very engaged, you may hit higher numbers. That’s great! And, at any rate, every book helps. Get on those platforms and sell, sell, sell.
3. Can you create opportunities for bulk or sponsored sales?
I’ve saved the best for…third…because so many people shy away from this option, believing it’s too hard.
Bulk and sponsored sales are more challenging, but they are also immensely more valuable!
A bulk sale is exactly what it sounds like—one buyer, typically a business or nonprofit—purchases your book in bulk. You give them a slight discount for the bulk sale, which you save in distribution and storage costs, since you can have the entire order off-set printed and shipped to the company.
Sometimes, authors ask corporations to bulk order their book as a way to promote an upcoming talk at the company—you’re scheduled to speak on their campus, and giving your book away to all employees is a great way to promote the talk and get people excited. Other times, the book just makes sense for the organization, so the corporate head honchos agree to purchase it for everyone in the Marketing Department (for example).
Finally, if the book really aligns with an organization’s mission and vision, they may buy your book in bulk and send it out as a welcome gift, a donor thank-you gift, a Christmas gift, or other similar situations. Organizations that sponsor major conventions may agree to buy your book to drop into conference swag bags, usually with a custom cover or credit page (Think, “this book provided by Anytown Regional Bank”).
Sponsored sales are similar, with one key difference—the organization that buys the book is not the organization that will use the book. Instead, with sponsored sales, the organization will buy your book in bulk to gift to another organization, often a school, hospital, or nonprofit. In these cases, the custom credit page might read something like, “This book provided to Anytown Memorial Hospital by the United Realtors of Anytown.”
Any time your book speaks to a social cause, you’ve got opportunities for both bulk and sponsored sales. This allows you to order an off-set print run of, say, 1,000 books, usually for around $3 per book (although this varies depending on the particular specs of your book and the printer you use). You can sell your book in bulk for $7 each—a bargain for the organization at 50% off!—and earn $4,000 in a single (or a few) sales.
But the best part of bulk and sponsored sales isn’t the bottom line—it’s the fact that your book has gotten in the hands of your target reader. Assuming it’s an excellent book (and of course it is!), you’re bound to spark tons of word-of-mouth promotion. That drives new readers to your book and increases the value of the big sale.
Think about it—even if only 25% of the bulk recipients tell a friend about your book, you’ve earned an additional 1,287.50 without spending a dime on marketing. Score!
4. Are there other ways, besides sales, you could make money from your book?
Books do more than simply share a message—they communicate the author’s authority. How many people do you know who have published books? Not many, I’ll bet. And of those authors, how many are really good? Even fewer, right?
Publishing a high-quality, professionally edited, beautifully designed book places you in a very elite category. By some estimates, of the millions of people who want to write a book, only 3% actually begin writing. Only 1% of those authors finish, and even fewer publish.
There is no better way to prove yourself an elite expert.
And all that expertise is highly profitable. If you’re already a business owner, there’s a good chance your book will bring in new business, even if you only do the bare minimum of marketing and promotion. But you can embrace that opportunity even further—can you send your book to potential clients as a gift? Can you use your book as leverage to get you on stage at your next industry event? What about launching a webinar or online course based on your book and using that digital offering as a funnel to bring in high-ticket clients?
Your book needs to be marketed to sell.
But your book is marketing, too. It markets you as the expert in your niche.
Let’s take our $14 self-help book—the one you had printed for $3 a copy. If you took 100 copies (just $300) and shipped them to 100 leads ($280 total in media mail shipping), then followed up to see if you could help them implement your strategies in their lives, organizations, or communities, you’ll get at least one or two new clients—maybe as many as 10 or 15 or more, depending on your offer.
Say your offer costs $2,750—a fairly standard number for a 3-month coaching program—and you bring in five new clients. You’ve earned $13,750 in revenue for less than $600 in marketing spend. And, in my experience, those are conservative numbers. Books are really powerful, and sending a book with a hand-written note to a high-quality lead is a very strong marketing tactic. Many authors double, triple, or quadruple that conversion rate.
Plus, since those leads are in your exact niche, you’ve shared your book with 100 people who are likely to love it. That’s more word-of-mouth marketing for both your book and your business.
There’s no single formula for making money from book-adjacent business activities. Many authors leverage their book to get paid speaking gigs, promotions, media features, and other career-boosting benefits. My point isn’t to dictate the exact numbers you’ll make from your book.
Just don’t forget that book sales are only one way to earn money from authorship!
5. Will you invest time and/or money into marketing and promotion?
Finally, the elephant in the room. A book is a business. Books don’t sell if readers don’t know they exist. If you want to maximize your book’s ROI, you’ll need to do some work (and/or hire someone to do that work) to get the word out about your groundbreaking ideas.
If you don’t promote your book, you’ll be lucky to earn royalties in the $100s. The authors who make six figures are always promoting their book.
I’ve spoken with enough aspiring authors to know that this sounds really daunting. Especially if you’ve never been particularly entrepreneurial, you probably aren’t really sure how to go about marketing and promoting your book.
“Your book needs to be marketed to sell. But your book is marketing, too. It markets you as the expert in your niche.”
The good news is that you’ll be most successful if you choose one or two strategies and implement them consistently—you don’t need to do all the things, and in fact, you probably shouldn’t.
So what kinds of activities work well for new authors with a bit of anxiety around marketing and promotion? A few of our favorites include:
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Guest posting with helpful tips or information on blogs that speak to your audience
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Guest appearances (again, with helpful tips or information) on podcasts that share your audience
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Book review campaigns with blogs and digital magazines, in which you provide a free copy of your book for the blogger to review (pro tip: offer to write up an interview or guest post if they don’t have time to review the book)
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Free book giveaway campaigns to podcasts, social media influences, bloggers, and radio hosts who share your audience
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Panel appearances at regional or national conferences, where you can share helpful insights and encourage listeners to order a copy of your book.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, that’s a good sign that you might want to hire someone to do your marketing. We’ve seen many authors succeed with DIY promotion, but if you dread promoting your book, you won’t do it. And no marketing or promotion activities will succeed if you don’t actually do them!
With quality marketing and promotional activities, you can increase your reach substantially. A podcast that reaches 5k listeners per episode won’t sell 5k books, but it might sell 250. That’s $1,287.50 in royalties if those listeners buy through Amazon—more if you sell the book directly. If you can land on one podcast every other month, that’s a pretty easy $7,725 in your pocket. And if you really work your pitch, you can do much more than that.
The Bottom Line
As we learned from the ALLi study I referenced earlier, the median income for self-published authors is $12,749. It’s not hard to come up with that figure—even exceed it. Let’s try a few examples.
Note: In each of the following, my numbers are conservative. I believe an author who really leans into their strategy can exceed these numbers in most cases, but I’m not one to overpromise, so I’m holding back a bit, particularly in the new client acquisition examples.
Example 1: Self-Help, Conflict Management
Imagine this author hits the top ten for the first month, then falls back to average sales for the rest of the year. Around month 2, they pull back on Amazon sales and start really promoting bulk and sponsored sales. And, of course, they use their book to promote their coaching business.
Here’s a possible breakdown (based on data from Publisher Rocket):
$9,270.00 First two months royalties (at $5.15 per book, paperback only)
$4,626.00 Months 3-12 (at $5.15 per book, paperback only)
$2,000.00 Bulk sale (500 books at $4 profit) to relationship coach for welcome mailers
$1,200.00 Bulk sale (300 books at $4 profit) to law group for swag bags at convention
$16,500.00 One new client acquired per month for $2,750 coaching program ($1,375 profit)
Total first year earnings: $33,596
Example 2: Memoir, Black & African-American
This author has a moderate platform—around 8k engaged followers on Twitter and 5k Facebook friends. They decide to forgo bulk or sponsored sales to focus on building their speaking and media career. Due to their promotion campaign, they manage to stay in the top 10 on Amazon for six months before dropping down to average sales.
“Authorship is a pretty incredible accomplishment. It can be scary and exciting and overwhelming and full of possibilities, and most people never get to experience it. If you’re still reading, I’ll bet you’ve got your eye on authorship—you’re just not sure whether you can stomach the investment.”
Their royalties are a little higher—$6.72—because the average price in the category is around $17.
Here’s a possible breakdown:
$33,868.80 First six months royalties (at $6.72 per book, paperback only)
$3,708.00 Months 6-12 (at $6.72 per book, paperback only)
$40,000.00 Six keynotes, starting at $1,500 and raising up to $10k per appearance
Total first year earnings: $77,576.80
Example 3: Business and Leadership, Mentoring and Coaching
This author is a corporate consultant who helps companies nurture internal talent. Of course they want their book to do well (and, fortunately, this category isn’t as competitive as some!), but their main focus is on using their book as a marketing too. They lean into the “book as a business card” strategy, and land six new 6-month contracts for their team.
They hit the number one position in the first month (again, this isn’t a super competitive category, so this required relatively minimal marketing and promotion—all of which was wrapped up in the author’s typical marketing strategy), then fell to top ten for months 2-5, and finally fell to average for the rest of the year.
The average price for this type of book is similar to self-help, so we’ll use the $14 per book/$5.15 royalty rate again here.
$17,149.00 First month’s royalties (at $5.15 per book, paperback only)
$8,652.00 Months 2-5 (at $5.15 per book, paperback only)
$3,017.00 Months 6-12 (at $5.15 per book, paperback only)
$27,000.00 Six contracts at $9,000 per contract ($4,500 profit)
Total first year earnings: $55,818.00
Get Out There and Publish
Authorship is a pretty incredible accomplishment. It can be scary and exciting and overwhelming and full of possibilities, and most people never get to experience it. If you’re still reading, I’ll bet you’ve got your eye on authorship—you’re just not sure whether you can stomach the investment.
I get it. Publishing a very high-quality book can be pretty pricey.
But if you really lean into the fact that your book is a business, you can make your money back and then some. It won’t happen overnight, but opportunities will follow that book for years to come.
You’ve got something to say. Book a call so we can help you say it.
