thread: 2012-03-13 : Indie POV pt 2: Does It Pay?
On 2012-03-19, Paolo Guccione wrote:
I think there is a point no one has highlighte yet. You cannot really compare self-publishing with freelancing for a flat per-word rate, because you cannot really know when you must stop counting the revenue that comes from self-publishing. In the age of Print-on-Demand and electronic fulfillment, it might never stop earning you money. The point is not just that Vincent or Luke made the big bucks (heck, if THEY did not, who else?) from DITV or BW, it is that they will still be making money from them in 20 years' time. It is like life insurance, or a private pension fund, rather than a salary.
This also means that the actual question about profitability is not how much it makes in the first year (the "peak" in sales), but how much does it cost you per year to keep it available after years, when it makes just a few hundred bucks per year. This is one reason why I am way (waaaay) more eager to make PDFs than physical books, despite my customers' preference for deforestation.
