This is an excerpt from How to Make a Living with your Writing, out now in ebook, print and audiobook editions.
This article is all about making money from writing books.
We'll look at the rights model, your options for publishing and tips for maximizing income this way.
First, let's talk about the magic of publishing books, because this may change your life and it's super exciting!
This is really important, because so many authors think that when they finish a manuscript, they have just one book to show for it. But actually it is much, much more than that.
Once the penny drops on how this business model works, you will understand how you can definitely make a living this way and why publishers have fancy offices in New York and London.
Publishers are not charities.
They don't want to publish books in order to help authors, they want to publish books in order to make money. Yes, most people working within publishing truly love books, but the company itself is a business.
Here's how rights work and how one manuscript can turn into multiple products and multiple streams of income.
1. First of all, let's take your finished manuscript and think about ebook editions.
You can sell ebooks on the biggest stores: Kindle, iBooks, Kobo and Nook. But you can also sell on Smashwords, Scribd, Tolino and lots of other global retailers, with more emerging every day as digital reading spreads.
2. Then you can have a print edition.
Print on demand technology means that you don't have to pay upfront to warehouse and ship physical products anymore.
You can use services like Createspace or Ingram Spark to upload files and have your print books available for sale online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and many other online bookstores. When a customer orders the book, one copy is printed and sent directly to them, and you receive whatever profit margin you set up.
3. Then you can have an audio edition.
You can now commission this yourself and do royalty split deals with narrators in some countries.
4. Now multiply those editions by the number of country markets or territories that you can publish in.
Many authors only sell books in domestic markets, but as an independent author you can sell in 190 countries.
My map of sales from Kobo Writing Life
So far, I've sold my English language books in 84 countries, and the little trickles start to add up over time.
So you can get started with multiple formats in multiple countries, but then there are other possibilities once you become more established as an author.
5. You can multiply your rights by language.
I currently have ebooks and print books available in German, Italian and Spanish, as well as English.
6. There are also subsidiary rights.
For example, media, film and TV or stage adaptation. If you're writing short stories, there might be an anthology and then you can have the rights back for a collection.
This might sound a little overwhelming, but remember, the point here is to show you that one manuscript can turn into multiple streams of income through the power of intellectual property. If you then write more books, the number of income streams continues to multiply.
Hopefully you're now starting to understand why publishers might want to buy your work!
This is an excerpt from How to Make a Living with your Writing, out now in ebook, print and audiobook editions.
Here are some other books that you will find interesting if you want to know more about intellectual property rights:
- Closing the Deal on your Terms: Agents, Contracts and Other Considerations – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- The Magic Bakery: Copyright in the Modern World of Fiction Writing – Dean Wesley Smith
- The Copyright Handbook: What Every Writer Needs to Know – Stephen Fishman
- How Authors Sell Publishing Rights – Orna Ross and Helen Sedwick (From The Alliance of Independent Authors)
Want more help?
- Read/listen to my book, How to Make a Living with your Writing, available in ebook, print or audiobook formats.
- Read/listen to my book, Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur in ebook or print format. You can also get the audiobook read by me here!
- You can also listen to The Creative Penn podcast on iTunes here, or check out the backlist of over 350 episodes here.
- I produce regular videos on writing and the business of being an author on my YouTube channel here.
- If you'd like to learn more, check out my Books and Courses
