How Much Can You Make Writing And Selling Books Online

There is a lot of buzz about writing books; and making money from them. Some of the biggest platforms for selling books online include Amazon Kindle, Smashwords, Kobo and even Ebay. The question is how much can you make writing and selling books on the online?

In this post we tackle this question and even throw in answers to other questions such as “Is it something from which one can make a living?”and “What Do I need to start selling books online?”

This post is designed to give the reader a fair and balanced view of self publishing online, and to prepare his mind for the realities associated with selling books online.

How Much Can You Make Writing And Selling Books Online?

This is best answered with a question: “when did you last buy a book online?” We will come back to this in the later part of this post. Your answer will not directly influence your success as a self published author, but one must remember that the market is one big community, and we all buy each other’s books.

The amount of money one can make as a writer may depend on the following: Where You Are Selling Your Books, The Genre You Write About, Your Following or Popularity, Your Marketing Budget, and Your Race or Ethnicity. It is important to do a thorough breakdown of the factors mentioned above, that contribute to an author selling books online.

Where You Are Selling Your Books

“Amazon is where people go to shop” that is just how one author put it. She has not entirely wrong; authors earned a combined $300 million in a recent year under review. That is a lot of money however you look at it. Therefore it seems like a good idea to say that if you are going to make good money from selling books on the internet Amazon is a good place to start.

However, in my experience Smashwords is not too far behind. Please take a look at the following images which are the sales figures for both my Amazon and Smashwords.

The images above show how much I made selling books without spending any money on publicity. On the amazon side there are 4 books, while on the Smashwords side there are two paying books, the other 2 being free.

The free books on Smashwords are frequently downloaded; leading one to imagine that one could make a lot of money by just pricing the ebooks at $1 each. Again we will come back to this later on; let us look at other factors that can affect how much one can make selling books online.

The Genre You Write About

People love erotica these days; they also love self help books, while the good old genres of Romance and Thrillers continue to be popular.

Of course, one should also look at his particular talents before deciding on what genres to write; this is an art, and must flow as such if it is to be worthwhile. After selecting a good genre, you still have to look at your capacity to promote your book through your brand.

Your Following, Or Popularity

If Obama or Trump were to write a book right now it would be a best seller almost guaranteed. That is what having a following is all about. Same applies to musicians, sportsmen, and so on. So, if you are a preacher, a teacher, or any other person who has influence over other people, you may find it a little easier to sell your books.

The best thing about having a following is that they are not the only ones to buy your books; they will give it a nudge, and then the algorithms will kick in, making it visible to even more people.

You can make a lot of money selling books online if you have the following; it may be the single biggest factor driving success as a self published author.

But what about those who are not celebrities, and who do not have large numbers of people who are obliged to listen to them? They need to have a…

Marketing Budget

That’s right, your marketing budget may be the single biggest factor that can determine how much you can make writing and selling books online because visibility is a prized asset these days; it is the currency of the future, and every digital platform is looking to make money by offering visibility.

Therefore, you need to set some money aside, with which you will promote your book. There are many options, but the best place to market your book is on a platform where people go to check out books. Amazon, Kobo, and other websites that deal on books and other digital content should be your first choice. Some good reports have come from Facebook Ads as well.

Make your findings about what makes each advertising platform unique, and then decide on which one you are going to use.

Just make sure that the money you spend is only a fraction of what the book costs, so you can recoup what you spend, and also make some profit on top of what you are spending.

For Example: if you spend $0.60 per click on an Amazon Ad for your book, you should price your book at $7. This is because not every click will lead to a purchase, and sometimes it could take 3 clicks to make a sale. 3 clicks at $0.60 will cost you $1.8 which when removed from $7 will leave you with $5.2.

Amazon will take around 30% of that, and the government will take another 30%, leaving you with 40%. Long story short, you are going home with a profit of 2.08 for your effort. Now if you manage to sell 100,000 copies you will have $208,000, so there is some potential for making money through this gig.

Your Race Or Ethnicity

We Would Like To Pretend that we live in a perfect world where race and ethnicity do not matter in business, but at some point we are going to have to wake up from that delusion. Minorities may have a harder time selling their books than other ethnic groups because that’s just human nature.

However, if the above steps have been taken, one can make some good money selling ebooks on the internet.

So Is It Something From Which One Can Make A Living?

It is possible to live off ones earnings as a self published author, there are people consistently making around $50,000 per year from this gig. However, this is something you grow into; you need time and resources to build yourself up until you reach that level.

Leaving your day job all of a sudden to pursue a career as a writer will probably end in frustration. Besides, you need to invest money over time before you can start reaping any significant returns.

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We did say we would get back to the question of “when last did you buy a book online?”, and the issue of free books selling more than those with price tags on them. Well even if your answer is “I just bought a book online yesterday,” you must understand that you are among the few. Most people are poor, and they want everything for free.

There are other ways of making money with your writing talents though, such as that below.

Further Reading: How To Make Money Online With Zero Investment