Post by account_disabled on Jan 2, 2024 5:18:40 GMT
Numerous articles criticizing Self Publishing have been published on this blog. I thank Daniele Imperi for the space he granted me, giving me the opportunity to propose an alternative vision and a series of reasons why the choice of Self Publishing is valid for a writer today. Before this, however, I would like to ask the readers of Penna Blu a question. What is the state of publishing in Italy today? Let's line up some data (the numbers are always the ones that give a concrete and real vision to things). From the website of the Italian Publishers Association it appears that between 2014 and 2015 there was a: -3.4% readers (848,000) -3.6% of the market -6.4% paper copies sold -3.6% of the overall book market turnover -6.4% (-6.1% for eBooks) on the cover price -6.8% of “weak” readers -0.8% of “strong” readers You can read the complete data in this report from which, beyond the strange optimistic tones, the most worrying fact of all emerges: the Italian publishing market has returned to the levels of 2003 (i.e. that of 12 years ago).
Why this situation? Of course, we could bring the economic crisis into play, but it would mean hiding the dust under the carpet. Let's face it, once and for all: publishing in our country has always been a niche market , with supply enormously greater than demand. Why? Why are Italians "genetically" hostile to literature, philosophy and non-fiction? I never believed it. I think the problems should be traced back to a higher level, to those who publish and promote the books, to the publishers. Let's analyze together Special Data what the strategies of Italian publishing have been in recent years: chasing the famous name (often on television, from Fabio Volo to Luciana Littizzetto), poor quality texts, poor editing, distribution close to zero, zero promotion. A brief clarification. This is the situation not only of small publishing for budget reasons, but also of large publishing which now focuses only on a few authors who have "proved" that they can sell millions of copies. So, the question I ask all Penna Blu readers is: Why would an author entrust his work to a publisher? I remember, in fact, that the royalties of a writer, unless his name is Roberto Saviano, are, on average, around 7% of the cover price.
The rest will go to the bookshop (20%), the distributor (15%) and the rest to the publisher (48%) and other market operators. Naturally the percentages will be different if you have written a digital book and not a paper one. Let's do the math. Let's imagine that you wrote a book with a cover price of 18 euros, selling 1000 copies. The total turnover (we do not consider VAT and taxes) from the sale of your book will be 18,000 euros from which you will only take 1,260 euros . On the contrary, let's imagine that you published your book using Self Publishing mode and sold it directly from your blog (without, therefore, going through Amazon). In this case, from the 18,000 euros we deduct the costs you had to face for editing, layout and cover. In a recent article on this blog, a cost of 2,650 euros was calculated (plus VAT of course). To these costs must be added the costs for promotion and marketing which, exaggerating, we calculate at 2,000 euros : the costs for the blog, hosting, an autoresponder, a service for the creation of Squeeze Pages such as Optimize Press, a campaign on Facebook Ads.
Why this situation? Of course, we could bring the economic crisis into play, but it would mean hiding the dust under the carpet. Let's face it, once and for all: publishing in our country has always been a niche market , with supply enormously greater than demand. Why? Why are Italians "genetically" hostile to literature, philosophy and non-fiction? I never believed it. I think the problems should be traced back to a higher level, to those who publish and promote the books, to the publishers. Let's analyze together Special Data what the strategies of Italian publishing have been in recent years: chasing the famous name (often on television, from Fabio Volo to Luciana Littizzetto), poor quality texts, poor editing, distribution close to zero, zero promotion. A brief clarification. This is the situation not only of small publishing for budget reasons, but also of large publishing which now focuses only on a few authors who have "proved" that they can sell millions of copies. So, the question I ask all Penna Blu readers is: Why would an author entrust his work to a publisher? I remember, in fact, that the royalties of a writer, unless his name is Roberto Saviano, are, on average, around 7% of the cover price.
The rest will go to the bookshop (20%), the distributor (15%) and the rest to the publisher (48%) and other market operators. Naturally the percentages will be different if you have written a digital book and not a paper one. Let's do the math. Let's imagine that you wrote a book with a cover price of 18 euros, selling 1000 copies. The total turnover (we do not consider VAT and taxes) from the sale of your book will be 18,000 euros from which you will only take 1,260 euros . On the contrary, let's imagine that you published your book using Self Publishing mode and sold it directly from your blog (without, therefore, going through Amazon). In this case, from the 18,000 euros we deduct the costs you had to face for editing, layout and cover. In a recent article on this blog, a cost of 2,650 euros was calculated (plus VAT of course). To these costs must be added the costs for promotion and marketing which, exaggerating, we calculate at 2,000 euros : the costs for the blog, hosting, an autoresponder, a service for the creation of Squeeze Pages such as Optimize Press, a campaign on Facebook Ads.