How to get your book published, Part 4

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How to get your book published, Part 4

And how to get paid. A self-published author tells how much he gets paid for ebooks, paperbacks, and audiobooks

James Breiner

Apr 10

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You’re reading the Your News Biz newsletter. My goal is to help digital media entrepreneurs find viable business models.

This is the fourth in our series on How to Get Your Book Published, and the second one based on experiences of David Miraldi, a lawyer turned true-crime writer. I have merged elements of a Zoom interview with his email update on how to get paid once you’re published. — James Breiner

By David Miraldi

After I published my third nonfiction book, my marketing team encouraged me to place all three titles with Kindle Unlimited. By doing so, I gave Amazon the exclusive right to sell my eBook and to allow Kindle Unlimited subscribers to have unlimited access to them.

These subscribers pay a monthly fee to Kindle (almost like Netflix or a streaming service). They then have access to all books in the Kindle Unlimited library and pay no additional fees. Subscribers can have access to 20 eBooks at a time.

A screenshot of the Amazon page when Miraldi’a books hit the bestseller list in the Courts category, Aug. 26, 2023

Authors are paid 0.4 cent for each page that is read by a Kindle Unlimited subscriber. One month, Miraldi had over 500,000 page-reads.

Again, I was skeptical that this could be profitable for the author. How would I get paid? As it turned out, authors are paid 0.4 cent for each page that is read by a Kindle Unlimited subscriber. How is that determined? Apparently, Amazon is able to track the subscriber’s progress on a given book. Scary, right?

I was fortunate that my books were very popular when initially placed on Kindle Unlimited. One month, I had over 500,000 page-reads. You can do the math—that’s $2,000. Other months, I reached over 300,000 page reads per month ($1,200). Now, a year and a half later, with no new book out, my page reads have diminished to 75,000 to 100,000 pages a month. (That translates to $300 to $400.)

However, this avenue can be helpful to the self-published author. Kindle Unlimited obviously promotes authors who are in this program.

Payments for audio books

My audio book is available on Audible (ACX) and Findaway Voices. Findaway Voices then distributes my audio book to 41 vendors.

I was skeptical about Findaway Voices as a marketer of my audiobooks and the royalties that I would receive. I get paid around $1 a download for the audiobook, which I thought was an insult, considering that I paid a lot of money to a narrator and a company to produce the audiobook. With Audible the royalties are better - 40% of the sales price.

I should not have been skeptical of Findaway. It was purchased by Spotify and it has been a great middleman for getting my audiobooks to audiences not served by Audible. In fact, my royalties each month from Findaway are greater than those from Audible.

Printed books, miniseries

By the way, the Kindle Unlimited program does not apply to print books. I still have complete control over them and get paid a royalty for each book sold on Amazon.

I also use IngramSpark for people who want a paperback or hardback. Barnes & Noble and other independent book stores will order from Ingram for both paperback and hardback. Barnes & Noble will not order a paperback from Amazon.

The mini-series proposal I had in the works did not survive the long strikes by Hollywood writers and actors in 2023. Lionsgate did not renew their option on my first book, “The Edge of Innocence.” The screenwriter who wrote the pilot is still trying to interest another studio with the project, but it does not seem likely.

Advice for aspiring writers

If someone is thinking about just publishing one book, they probably will be unable to make any money on it unless they're someone who's already famous.

The model that works for most independent writers is to offer their first book for free and gather email addresses of people that have read their book.

Then they have to be prolific and write about every three or four months and sell more in their series. If they sell only eBooks, they keep their costs down. And if they have an email list of 2,000-5,000 people, they can make $70,000, $80,000 a year writing.

The cheapest way to go for indie writers is just to produce an eBook. However, if you want to market the book, you will need to spend at least $2,500 to $3,000 on a consultant and ads. And if you decide to go with an audio book, then add another $3,000.

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A final thought

Writing three or four books a year “was not my idea of retirement,” Miraldi told me. “It takes time to research.” When writing nonfiction, he would set a book aside for several months and then repeatedly rewrite and revise it.

It actually took him a couple of years to get to the finish line with his novel, “The Edge of Guilt.” It’s scheduled to come out at the end of May.

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