Bishop, regarding your 20Booksto50K observation, it’s likely that those authors are writing fiction, and particularly series fiction. Yes? (Randi writes nonfiction.)

Sandy

According to Price’s law, 10% of the authors will sell 50% of the copies;
so 50,000 authors sell 120M books. Of that 10%, 10% will sell 50% of those copies; so 5,000 authors sell 60M books. Conversely the 2nd 10% sell 50% of the 120M books, or 5,000 60M books; so the top 20% of authors sell 180M books combined; or 2/3s of all books being sold by 10,000 authors. The 3rd decile sells 50% of 60M books or 30M; so the top third of authors sold 210M books. The goal is not to be in the bottom 70% who only sold 30M books.

This leads to the famous long tail. This is true in most domains, and is why the top couple of percent in a domain tend to earn disproportionately more than the remainder.

You wrote 60 non-fiction books in a niche market over the past 14 years, or about 4 books per year. Non-fiction sells fewer copies per title generally. Your success owes as much to your post-secondary degrees in English and 34 years in writing copy professionally than your having a traditional publisher.

If you look at movements like 20Booksto50K, you see that a decent self-published author who publishes roughly 4 books per year can be self-sustaining after a few years due to brand effects. This assumes the author was mindful of the need for a professional product and marketing (which is your background).

So, you may likely have done as well going self-published as you did traditionally.

You’re welcome, Larry!

Sandy

Adrijus, the text at the link corresponding to the statistic refers to “professional U.S. writers.” That’s staff writers or those who make a living as freelance writers, etc. Some of them are probably self-published authors, but self-pubbed authors who aren’t on payroll as writers, don’t earn a FT living from their royalties, or earn their living through other professions and write books on the side won’t be included in that number.

Sandy