{"id":256508,"date":"2023-11-07T07:12:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T12:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=256508"},"modified":"2023-11-06T17:58:15","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T22:58:15","slug":"my-book-earned-out-in-two-years-and-nothing-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/my-book-earned-out-in-two-years-and-nothing-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"My Book Earned Out in Two Years and Nothing Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was a stormy summer day, dead in the middle of August, with lightning sheeting the sky and a deep underwater gloom pervading the parking deck. My three-year-old had fallen asleep in his car seat on our way to the children\u2019s museum, and I could hardly believe my luck: a whole hour to spend on my dumb internet routines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My publisher\u2019s sales portal updates in massive tranches every few (or two) weeks, so naturally I check it every day. And here was an update\u2014in fact, a huge leap, with total unit sales topping 10,000 for the very first time. I fumbled around in my Gmail, found my book contract, punched the numbers into my phone calculator, did the math. Then, to be 100 percent sure, I had a Wall-Street-whiz friend check my homework. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All it had cost me was incalculable time and energy, weekends with my family, the opportunity to finesse and sell another book.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d done it. I\u2019d earned out. In less than two years, if barely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And all it had cost me was incalculable time and energy, weekends with my family, the opportunity to finesse and sell another book. Truly, I\u2019d busted my ass. Hustled. Worked every connection. Taken what I learned during 12 years\u2019 hard labor in corporate marketing and applied it. Hired a PR person, too. When my nonfiction debut came out in September of 2021, I did dozens of podcast interviews on shows large and small, popular and obscure, and placed excerpts or companion pieces everywhere from Literary Hub to the Wall Street Journal <\/em>to this website right here<\/a>. I also gave talks anywhere they\u2019d have me: major museums, universities, writers\u2019 conferences, fan cons, Zoom-based book clubs, libraries\u2014even the reception hall of a pretty country church where, nibbling cookies after the event, a sweet older woman squeezed my hand and told me God had worked through me to write this book, making me wonder ever since if she\u2019s read it and still thinks so. Likewise, I experimented with Amazon ads, and worked with my publisher to arrange e-book promotions. One Kindle Daily Deal that my editor spearheaded led to over 300 sales. Deeply discounted, they nonetheless counted, and even better, the promo spiked hardcover sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was how I beat the odds to sell circa 11,000 books in 23 months, \u201cearning out\u201d my modest $20,000 advance. Depending on the stats you\u2019re looking at, 98 percent of traditionally published books don\u2019t sell more than 5,000 copies their first year in print. Much less their second year in print. Much less their third\u2014you get the idea. By the same token, depending on your stats, only 25 or 30 percent of traditionally published books ever <\/em>earn out, moving into the black for the publisher and ensuring you, the author, will begin receiving royalties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what happens when you earn out: Nothing. No one even notices.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s possible to earn out lots of different ways, with a mix of foreign-rights sales, e-book sales, audiobook sales, yada yada, but hardcovers tend to get you there quickest. At least this was true with my situation and my sales breakdown. Via all that hustling I scooped up a grim $1.80 of income per book, rising to $2.25 per book after the first 5,000. A breadcrumb trail, if that\u2014Alexa, what\u2019s smaller than a breadcrumb?\u2014I\u2019d been going down for nearly two years.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pall of the parking deck was nothing compared to these realizations, to the mood that came over me in my milk-spattered, stroller-choked SUV, hands sweating as I cupped my phone and stared until the numbers blurred together, a black soup of digital digits. Could it really be true that absolutely nothing happens when you earn out? That you in fact have to figure it out for yourself that you have<\/em> earned out? I mean, isn\u2019t earning out like a way bigger deal than that? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, yes, and no. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what happens when you earn out: Nothing. No one throws beads, confetti, nada. No one even notices. They\u2019re busy. They\u2019ve moved on. They\u2019re not neurotically checking the sales portal or pathologically over-working to try to make those figures tick up, up, up. Which only makes sense, of course. My little book was everything to me, and a blip, a rounding error to everyone else. Which is why I cried that humid, gloomy afternoon in my car, realizing that, hard as I tried, I\u2019d gotten it all wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t go on late-night television shows. I didn\u2019t become a household name.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It may be rare to earn out, but that doesn\u2019t mean earning out should be the goal. I sought to move copies obsessively, nigh compulsively, because I don\u2019t like feeling as if I owe anyone money. That I haven\u2019t earned my keep. What I missed was, given the modest nature of my advance, the sales number required to earn out was modest, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had I really worked so hard for such an irrelevant result? Had I really sacrificed all that time\u2014time I could\u2019ve dedicated to my family, to writing, or to, I don\u2019t know, some new and theoretically more rewarding pursuit\u2014to appease a misguided sense of guilt? Or worse, my ego? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The still more devastating reality\u2014the one that\u2019s even harder to face, which is saying something\u2014is how everything\u2019s just as difficult as it always was during those na\u00efve early days when I was a young, hungry, ambitious, unpublished author lusting after the dream. Writing is not easier. Publishing is not easier. No one\u2019s chasing me down for book #2. Readers, friends, and frenemies ask, but it\u2019s not as if the Big 5 have circled me, barking. I\u2019d thought, hoped, that if I showed I could make a fairly niche title successful, then I\u2019d look better when shopping the next idea, something grander and splashier. But earning out hasn\u2019t made finishing new proposals any easier, which I assume is why I haven\u2019t actually finished a new one, not really <\/em>finished, not to a salable level. Earning out hasn\u2019t refined the drafts of a novel (labeled, variously and nonsensically, \u201cV1,\u201d \u201cNot_final,\u201d and \u201cSept23\u201d) that litter my desktop, either. And the commercial realities of the marketplace remain just as difficult. Ditto my pitiful perch within it. <\/p>\n\n\n