Multiple income streams for authors
Most people understand that you can create multiple streams of income from non-fiction books, but I often get the question “What about fiction authors? How can they make money in different ways?”
As someone who's run a successful nonfiction property for eleven years, I can tell you that multiple income streams are THE way to go as an independent. That way if one of them, say ad sales, goes south, you've got other streams to rely on, and vice versa. It's common business sense: if you've got one client, when you lose that client, you lose your company. Same with income streams.
What are your income streams, and can you think of new ones we might not have explored?
You could also do an audiobook version of what has been written, offering it as a perk, and give littel audio teasers. With some people having a very busy schedule, there are those that appreciate audio versions of a book.
I like the webcomics idea, Another thing you could do is try to design a pdf version of the book (for digital download) in a different layout style. Think like having your series appear in the same pages of the Strand magazine as Sherlock Holmes.
One of my first lessons about making money came from helping my parents run yard sales as a child: the phrase "nickel and dime them to death," meaning that you can offer a lot of products at prices that are too cheap to pass up, and make a sizeable amount of cash that way.
My income streams
- Reader donations
- Project wonderful ad revenue
- MP3 sales
- Associated Content pageview revenue
That's not very many, but thus far, I haven't done much to monetize my site -- that'll be changing in the foreseeable future. Here's some ideas that I've considered and/or plan to implement in the future (not all of these are related to my site, but most are):
- Subscription model - subscribers get access to 4-6 exclusive poems per month, plus other extra content.
- Downloadable chapbooks - 12-20 poems, usually on a given theme, with at least half of them being poems exclusive to that chapbook
- Poetry critiques/workshop - reader submits a poem and receive a detailed critique for a small fee; kinda like a mini-editing service
- Affiliate sales - attach Amazon affiliate links to reviews of poetry books and poetry-related products
- Merchandise - t-shirts, coffee mugs, bookmarks, stickers, journals etc.
- Artistic prints - collaborate with an artist to release limited edition prints of some of my poems
- Talking poems - sell a printed poem in a frame with a built-in audio player, preloaded with a recording of the poem. hang it on your wall, press a button whenever you want to hear the poem read.
- Direct ad sales
- Poet for hire - readers could commission poems to give as gifts, to commemorate things, etc. Or hire me to read poetry as entertainment at an event.
- Looking into other sites like Associated Content to pay for pageviews
- Freelance web design / Drupal magic for weblit writers
- Stock photography
- Voice acting
- ??????
- Profit!
This is kind of tangential to the topic, but:
What level of income stream is possible for weblit authors? Zero (or negative income, I guess) being one end of the spectrum, what's the other? When I was reading Tales of MU Alexandra Erin was averaging about $700/month with extra update incentives (which is about twice my entire cost of living if I wanted to write full-time). Now apparently she's making a living from it. I remember this more vaguely, but I thought Mei Lin was getting a couple hundred a month in donations for incentives for a while. This winter the creator of Inhuman got something like $3,500+ of donations for extra content.
I was wondering if anyone else would be willing to offer figures of their low, average, and high income streams. I'm particularly curious about anyone who already has established one. I'm getting pricked incessantly by the social taboo against asking people what they make 
, but people obviously have a choice of whether or not to answer.
I suppose one way to maximize income streams is to minimize cost of living. Some of that is dependent on region (I rented a room in NYC for what it costs to rent a house in the South), urban/suburban/rural location, family size, medical needs, and cultural ideas about quality of life. But there is the saying that the way to always be rich is to live below your means.
I was wondering if anyone else would be willing to offer figures of their low, average, and high income streams. I'm particularly curious about anyone who already has established one. I'm getting pricked incessantly by the social taboo against asking people what they make, but people obviously have a choice of whether or not to answer.
Without breaking it down to exact numbers, I made some mentions of how much I'm making in this post in another thread.
I suppose one way to maximize income streams is to minimize cost of living. Some of that is dependent on region (I rented a room in NYC for what it costs to rent a house in the South), urban/suburban/rural location, family size, medical needs, and cultural ideas about quality of life. But there is the saying that the way to always be rich is to live below your means.
This is VERY important to my situation. I lead an incredibly spartan lifestyle. My rent is about $375 a month, and water & garbage are included in the bill. Tack on another $40-80 a month for electric, plus groceries, and that's about all I really need to earn to survive each month. I do have to supply a few hundred a month for student loans, but scholarships kept me from owing as much as most American college graduates, so that's not too bad either, and it's the only debt I owe.
I don't pay for cable TV (don't watch it) or Internet (I get it at wifi cafes and work), and my cell phone is a cheap $10 a month on a family plan. My car's paid off, and I live in a tiny town where I can walk everywhere I need to go, so I don't spend much on insurance, gas, or maintenance, and I don't have any major health issues that require regular costly doctor visits or prescriptions.
In light of all that, the $40 or so I'm earning every month probably goes a lot further than it would for, say, a family of four with a mortgage, car payment, health bills, cable, internet, and the like.
I posted this in December: http://vjchambers.blogspot.com/2009/12/year-in-self-publishing.html
This year, I have done far worse. I've made about $70 so far, and my webhosting for the year cost me more than that. Currently, I'm in the hole. 
Oh, well, I do have $5 from PW ad sales, but they won't send me that money because it's not enough and $2.50 from Amazon, but they won't send me that either, because it's not enough.
My income stream is pretty much solely from selling my writing. I do have some merch for sale. No one has bought any of it.
I do hope to do a little better with the rest of the year, since I'm writing a sequel to my most popular set of books, and everyone's excited about it.
I don't have any income streams at the moment (well not from my writing I do have a job). Unless you count the few cents a day I get from ads but I don't count those as my own ad budget is higher than that. Of course as visitors and page views go up ad revenue should as well. I hope to acheive an advertising break even point at some point in the next twelve months.
I do intend to have other income streams eventually. As I've mentioned before I'm currently trying to build up my readership before seeking money. Once it reaches a level where it 5-10% of readers is a significant number I'll start putting the plans into action.
Becky
Thanks for sharing, everyone, and thanks for the links Gabriel and Valerie. I hadn't yet read through the Is Your Writing Worth Anything thread.
So far the only monetized aspect of free content that I've personally seen work and doesn't turn me off as a reader is donation incentives. People who really want them can donate, and it doesn't restrict those who don't/can't. It's an extra, not-baseline.
For anyone who may consider doing audiobooks, but doesn't have the time to produce them, there is a couple of options. A friend of mine sent me this link to Mind Wings. They will produce short stories (anywhere between 7800 words and 9300 words) that are an hour in length and help sell them, however, they provide a royalty to you. Work also has to be previously unpublished.
http://www.miwishorts.com/?gclid=CK_r05L076ICFQLEsgodNnndlA
The other option is through Voices by Veronica. Veronica (or V as she is called) has a lot of experience in the field as she's done the audio versions of Steve Libby and Mercedes Lackey's Secret Worlds. She knows the format required for uploading to podiobooks.com. She takes into account word count and drafts a contract from there. If the individual episodes go up for sale, she will have to be compensated for her work in that regard. More at her site.
I'm doing better than most of you. I feel sheepish for saying it for some reason. I've been at this online thing a lot longer than most of you; I've been making money via writing on the web, albeit nonfiction, for 11 years, and I wrote nonfiction for broadcast before that. On the nonfiction site, I make between $300-2,000/month, mostly from advertising. At one point I made a substantial sum from Amazon sales, too--in the range of $200-800/mo. Now that's dropped to two figures.
At MLM and its associated sites, I figure I get about $100/mo from my main advertising channel--Blogads. From PW I make in the neighborhood of $40/mo, but that goes straight back into my ad budget. I've got nearly $100 banked up there for the book launch in the fall. I never withdraw from PW, but then, I can afford not to.
As for donations, at their height I did $800/mo for bonus chapters. I'm not taking bonus contribs right now. I still do about $100/mo in subscription donations from readers, which is awesome considering I've done very little writing this year compared to previous years.
And then there's the biggie. I just closed pre-sales for book one. Exactly 50 people gave me $2500 total to produce the book. I didn't get any of it, but then, I didn't have to pay much to get "Lovers and Beloveds" professionally produced--maybe $100 out of pocket so far. I'll have to pay to buy the books and get them shipped, and that'll probably be out of pocket but oh well. I'm hoping to make it up in pre-orders and future sales, particularly banking on ebooks because I don't have to buy/ship copies.* I'll at least break even and maybe even make a little over time.
The pre-salers paid for a professional editor (Annetta Ribken), a good cover artist (Alice Fox), and a professional typographer to design the book block (MCM). When it hits the deck, "Lovers and Beloveds" will look as professional as anything a regular publisher would produce. I hope it reads as well, too, but that's on me.
*Normally I'd let the POD printer handle shipping/fulfillment, but here's the problem: They charge a fucking arm and a leg for shipping on single books, which discourages sales, and I can't autograph them. By buying from me direct, I can save people a little money on shipping because if I buy a big box of books it doesn't cost that much more than if I buy a single one. In fact, the box of 20 copies of "Scryer's Gulch 1-10" cost the same in shipping as for a single copy. I'm probably going to buy in cases of 20 after the initial box for pre-sales and pre-orders for LaB, which is going to be closer to 60. I'm not counting on a lot of pre-orders. ("Pre-order," as opposed to "pre-sale," just reserves an autographed copy of the book and expedites shipping. The pre-salers get a lot more than that.)
No need to be sheepish MeiLin. Your site (and success), along with Alexandra Erin, was one of the big catalysts for getting me serious about trying to learn how to make my writing profitable online. That you're still pulling in those kind of numbers, in my opinion, validates what we're doing, and shows that it can in fact work.
I second Gabriel's comment. With you and Alexandra Erin we get an idea of the not-entirely-in-the-hole end of the spectrum. Thanks for being wiling to share your facts and figures, along with tips about shipping.
I third it. Good grief, why the hell should you be ashamed to be succeeding? Pardon my internetese, but fuck that. It is inspiring.
Thanks for being so open about your income.
Personally, my intention has always been to help a bunch of other people make a small amount of money off their weblit, and take a small piece of the action for helping them with that. Its the dirty evil editor in me, lol.
Anyone thought of hard merchandise? Tshirts, bumperstickers, ect.
I know a few writers that have done well with hard merchandise. I think Andy Fanton (the guy behind Lord Likely) has done fairly well with t-shirts.
The big thing I see with products like that is that you have to decide how to handle it. You could do POD through something like Zazzle, but they tend to have high prices, quality is questionable, and their customer interfaces can be confusing.
On the other hand, if you get the products made and try to sell them yourself, you have to handle inventory and shipping yourself, and there's the chance you might get stuck trying to store a bunch of products you might not be able to sell. However, it allows you to sell at a better price and have greater control of the quality of the product, so you can make more money that way.
It's a trade off, and of course, as with anything, you need to look at and evaluate your own situation before deciding which one is right for you.
Hello,
I set up an e-store to support our web manga ayatakeo.com. We had posters, postcards, tee-shirts, and computer keyboards printed with Ayatakeo art.
It took sweat-buckets of effort and a pocket-full of money to set up, but returned very little. Perhaps if I were a smarter merchandiser it would have done better. I really didn't invest enough effort into that end of it, so can't say that it wouldn't work for a cannier marketer.
On the other hand, our products sold very well at at anime conventions. When we were able to get free artist tables we made money. When we had to buy dealer space, we covered booth, advertising, travel, accommodation, and meals, but basically broke even.
My artist, Sonia Leong, has been successfully selling Ayatakeo vol. 1, a print edition of the first year of Ayatakeo, at anime conventions in the U.K. But costs, time, and my age work against me here in the U.S.
I never tried advertising, mainly because I don't understand how it works and don't know how many hits we need to make the effort worthwhile. I was also reluctant to clutter the site with ads.
Best of success to all,
LRP
They mentioned adapting the novel to other media. Nowadays, flash games have become extremely popular, and in some cases people have managed to earn money for them. One could collaborate with a flash programmer to make a game based off of your work or an interactive visual novel. If you need an example of someone who's done this, look at the creators of Vera Blanc.
Another thing: a premium podcast. I think lots of people would find it worth some money to get your story in audio book form. We often talk about how people find it hard to sit and dedicate time to read new webserials--what if they could just download it and listen to the story on their iPod or in the car? You could read your work as-is, or make your story into a radio drama (if you think it'd translate well and you've got the voice actors to help), and add special commentary at the end.
We also know how popular webcomics are. Making your story into a comic--be it in Japanese manga style, or American superhero style--would surely catch a lot of interest. I'm not talking about one-shots either, I'm talking about a complete story--roughly 30-40 pages, sold digitally or in print.
If you can find a musician, maybe commission them for some songs based off your story and sell it as a special soundtrack? Music is another great hook that draws people in. While this idea may be hard to sell on it's own, if you use it in conjuction with some of the ideas mentioned above (podcast, game, etc...) you can most likely get some people buying just the music.
Besides adapting your story to other medias, I'm not really sure what else I can add. Joanna Penn seemed to mention all the other ones I could think of.
"Eikasia" - My fantasy weblit
My Twitter: @cajeck