“Self-Publishing is Super Easy… Kinda” Part 4 – Examples of Success
April 15, 2024
By Guz Perezrios
Now, after reading everything that I’ve told you, I’m sure many of you are still skeptical. You have every right to be. I’m just some guy telling you stuff on the internet. I can preach all I want about the advantages of utilizing these techniques, but if I don’t provide evidence of their success, then what good is the advice? Well, below I have a couple of little-known authors who have had success. These are people who aren’t famous. They don’t make money off fame, but the popularity of your book. The way I see it is, you don’t need fame to be successful, and these authors prove that.
Examples of Success
Let’s take a look at one author who’s been at this for three years: Selkie Myth, author of “Beneath the Dragoneye Moons.” Currently, there are ten books in the series (after just three years). They’re LITRPGs (books that take place in a world dictated by video game logic). Royal Road is a site that draws fans of this genre in like moths to a light bulb. By posting his chapters here, Selkie gets a massive amount of attention on his work from fans of the genre. Selkie posts the books to the site for free, and after some time, takes them down and publishes them on Amazon. This gives readers a chance to see what the content of his story is like and encourages new readers to pick up copies of the book on Amazon when they see the immense popularity of the story on the site. You can buy the books on Kindle for $5, read them free through Kindle Unlimited, buy an audiobook for $6, or a paperback for $19.99. You take everything I’ve mentioned prior and apply them all together, and on Amazon alone, the author is making well over $20,000 a month, as Selkie reported on February 28th, 2023. On top of that, they have a Patreon that makes upwards of an additional $20,000 a month for people to read the next volume early.
Another self-published author who has had great success is Travis Deverell, author of the “He Who Fights with Monsters” series. Now, unlike Selkie Myth, Deverell hasn’t been so open regarding his earnings from Patreon or Amazon, but we can deduce enough just by looking at his Patreon numbers that he’s making a pretty heavy sum of money. With 7644 patrons at the time of writing this and subscription options in $1, $5, $10, $15, $20, and $50, we can see that at the very least he is making $7664. Now, that’s a tier without advanced chapters, so the likelihood he is making more than that is significantly higher. With 10 books written over 4 years and 828 chapters, it’s fair to say he’s making a decent profit on Amazon as well, though we can only speculate by calculating total sales and e-book rating.
One last notable self-published author I want to touch on real quick is Sleyca, author of “Super Supportive” making $25,140/month through Patreon in just under 8 months. This author is still new in the game and has yet to do anything through Amazon, so Patreon is where their earnings come from, but it is still impressive to see numbers like this in such a short period. If the numbers were to remain like this, then the author would be making $301,680/year.
First-time authors never make enough money to live off their work. Some might find success, but most of the time authors write as a side job. Self-published authors who dedicate themselves to their work, like Selkie, make $40,000 (average) x 12 months = $480,000/year. You don’t need to write a book that appeals to everyone, you don’t need to write a book that the publishing house wants to see, and you don’t need fame to be considered a successful author. If your book is making you enough money to live off of it, then that’s a success. If you want to find out more about these authors, there are links below.
Conclusion
Now, is this going to be the same for all of you? No. While self-publishing is easier than traditional publishing, it still has its challenges. Garnering a fanbase, advertising, actually writing the material. It might not work for everyone, or it might, it depends on what you’re looking to do and how you wish to approach it. Find a community of like-minded individuals and use them as a target demographic, or just self-publish your book for free and not worry about sales if that’s all you care to do. These are just a few examples of the potential of self-publishing. If you know and study your market, and learn to take advantage of online services that we’ve never had access to before the modern age, then you can make it on your own as an author. It’ll be a long process, it won’t happen overnight, but you can take matters into your own hands. You can keep up your search by looking for a literary agent, sending in hundreds of thousands of submissions, and receiving hundreds of thousands of rejection letters, but nothing is stopping you from doing this on your own. Today it’s easier than ever to publish your work and make a name for yourself. When I say it’s easy to self-publish, I mean it. To get accepted by a literary agent, you have a 1/6000 chance of getting published, or, you have a 100% chance of publishing your book on your own.
If you want to look more into the world of self-publishing, here are some links.
Amazon
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/royalty-calculator
Author Links