Quantity Or Quality?
April 24, 2024--- Is there any book author who would not like to have a six-figure income? – Yes, there is: the one who already makes a seven-figure income. But let us be more modest (for now) and talk about $100,000 in annual royalties. All roads lead to Rome, but many a writer is torn between two, seemingly (and I stress seemingly) alternative routes: quality vs. quantity.
Quality
True quality pays off. Stradivari violins are the point in case (to avoid an argument about the best books of all times). Here we have an author or publisher who spends an enormous amount time and resources on “crafting” the book. Wordsmithing everything, doing endless revisions, spending tons of money on market research, editors, and consultants and then investing another million on book marketing. Yes, such a machinery can produce best sellers. It is a totally legitimate approach, but one that is not affordable for the average writer.
Now, please do not get me wrong. Quality is essential. There are too many junk books out there, especially in the e-book environment. Poor content, poor language, dismal grammar, sloppy spelling, unacceptable formatting issues, etc. Therefore, rule number one is and always will be:
RULE #1: YOU MUST PRODUCE GOOD QUALITY BOOKS
This is to be interpreted as an appropriate level of quality. Look at the good old dime novel genre, and you will find that the truly successful writers of the time produced very good books and were very professional about what they were doing.
Quantity
But there is a second factor, and that is quantity. Let us go back to our example of the $100,000 in royalty income and assume you publish your books on the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing platform.
Have you ever done the maths? Do you know how many books it takes to make $100,000 in Kindle royalties? (Or other eBook platforms' royalties?)
There is the example of the number one best seller -- and I mean a paid best seller on the front page of the Amazon Kindle Best Seller list: The book is doing incredibly well, sells at $4.99, stays in the Top 100 for a couple of months and, at the end of the year, averages an Amazon Sales Rank of 500 over 365 day period. At a 70% royalty level, the author will have made more than $100,000. In fact, it would be $215,200 according to our formulas.
But what are the odds of your one book making it to the very top and staying in the top 500 for a whole year? -- Yes, what you think is correct.
Therefore, if you publish on Kindle (or any other ebook publishing platform for that matter) and if you want to make money, you must adhere to rule number two:
RULE #2: YOU MUST PRODUCE BOOKS IN QUANTITY.
Your annual income in royalties as a Kindle author will in essence depend on four variables:
A) The number of book titles published
B) The average sales price at which these book titles sell
C) The maximum possible KDP royalty level at that price
D) The average sales rank that these titles achieve
Being prolific as a writer is often a challenge. What is more, all the books you publish require at least some administrative effort as well as an appropriate level of marketing and promotion. To make your goal of at least $100,000 you have to set up an efficient production machinery.
You cannot waste time researching for the right niches or wasting money by simply taking chances as to what type of book or what genre will sell. That is where K-lytics will take a lot of burden from you. You focus on what you do best: creative ideas and capturing them in a compelling story that readers love.
K-lytics.com provides the market intelligence.
Kindle Millionaires
Ah, before I forget, here is the last rule. It is the rule that ends the debate about any "trade-off" between Rule #1 and Rule #2. It is the rule of the Kindle millionaires:
RULE #3: YOU MUST PRODUCE BOOKS IN QUALITY AND QUANTITY
So, how to make $100,000 or even $1,000,000 (one million!) in royalty income? – Check out the free bonus content in the K-lytics PREMIUM membership area: planning reference tables that will help you juggle with a four variables mentioned above and let you define the goal and the one “road to Rome” that is right for you.
Yes, I believe and Yes I have personal friends that have achieved this level. I appreciate what it takes, thanks for the reminder.
Good point, which isn’t being made enough. Rowling didn’t start making decent money until the fifth book in her series was published. Most of the “big names” I’ve followed are still cranking out content and many have at least their 30th book out now. Some have over 90 books. Be prepared to have an assembly line to become financially independent from writing and publishing. Your homework is first, of course. Asimov produced over 500 books during his lifetime, and he wrote 8 hours a day. There are few one-shot wonders, and they are all outliers. Both the Martian and 50 Shades of Gray were blogged years before they were published. Getting 6-figures is done regularly, but it’s by people to plan their work and work their plan – like any successful business.
It works – quality books with regular frequency to six, mid-six, and onto seven figures.
What’s weird is in this argument, no one ever acknowledges that you need to produce a lot to get to ‘Quality’. Quantity leads to Quality. Call it 10 000 hours rule, practice makes perfect, or anything else. Only writers put expectations to write first book perfectly and have it break out. That’s too much pressure on yourself.
We can’t dismiss how much quantity actually plays in Quality, eventually.