One of the interesting things about indie publishing through Amazon.com is that Amazon lets authors keep anywhere from 35 to 70 percent of the cover price of the books they sell; this contrasts with what a traditional publisher would pay, which, if you’re lucky, may be as much as 10 or 15 percent–paid quarterly and sometimes less frequently than that. Amazon, on the other hand, pays monthly. And of course, getting royalties from a traditionally published book occurs only if you sell out the print run, for which you’ve already been paid an advance against those royalties. So, if you don’t sell out, that advance is all you’ll get. And a traditional publisher will normally keep your book in print only for a limited time. With a book you publish for the Kindle through Amazon, your book will stay available for as long as you keep it there.

If you have unpublished books, they are not making you any money. They’re just sitting on your hard drive. If you put them up as ebooks, then you have some chance of generating income. The only question then is how many copies will sell.

My hope is that what I put up there will sell at least as well as my traditionally published books. Or even half as well. Or even a tenth as well.

For instance, according to Bookscan, between 70 and 100 copies of The Bible’s Most Fascinating People sells each week; that’s not counting whatever sales there may be of the book in the other 13 languages it is available in, ranging from Japanese to German to Russian.

At seventy per cent of the cover price, even a book a day average would add up pretty quick–especially given the number of books I intend to put up. That will happen as I finish the formatting and proofreading of them all. At the moment, only three of my short stories are up. More stuff is coming. Soon.

To get a more complete take on this, see Sarah A. Hoyt’s post on Sunday, Making Money From indie Publishing: A Guide For the Hopeful, the Optimistic and the Doomed. She goes into just how much you can make at taking this route.

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