The authors who make millions through self-publishing

Telegraph

4 days ago

Tens of millions of books have been self-published online since Amazon first made it possible in November 2007. Many languish in obscurity with zero sales, so writing a bestseller is anything but straightforward. But the rewards for getting it right are enormous.
'It felt like winning the lottery,' says Simon McCleave, 55, a crime novelist whose debut novel, The Snowdonia Killings, has sold half-a-million copies since he published it in 2020.
'I'd written a book that thousands of people wanted to buy and they were asking for another one,' he adds. 'I thought, 'Can I give up my job?'' A thought that doesn't often occur to debut authors who publish through traditional channels, controlled by agents and publishers.
An aspiring author needs an agent as few publishers will consider work by someone without representation. Agents (who typically take 15 per cent of earnings) will usually only take on one or two new clients annually, so it's a considerable achievement to just be signed.
A debut author could be offered an advance, starting at £10,000 and rising to £100,000, but six figures is rare and authors are obliged to pay it back through the book's earnings before they can access royalties (between 5-15 per cent). Hence it's hardly surprising that most published authors do not find themselves in a position to write full-time.
With digital or 'indie' self-publishing, manuscripts can be uploaded by the author to Amazon's direct publishing system with one click and they decide how much time and money to put into editing, cover design and advertising.
'In some cases, authors can make millions of pounds year on year,' says James Blatch, co-founder of consultancy firm Self Publishing Formula and a self-published author himself. 'Even if a writer makes £50,000 a year, it's often enough for them to quit their jobs.'
The Telegraph spoke to three successful self-publishing authors to find out how it's done...
'The money was life-changing'
'There were stories set in the Scottish Highlands or the Norfolk Broads and it occurred to me that no one had set a crime novel in Snowdonia,' says McCleave, who has so far written 32 thrillers, most centred around his protagonist, DI Ruth Hunter.
He started out as a scriptwriter in the Noughties, for shows such as Doctors, EastEnders, Holby City, The Bill and Silent Witness. 'The level of creative interference was incredible and the burnout was terrible,' he says.
So his family moved back to his wife's home in North Wales in 2007, and he started teaching English at secondary schools. His crime writing came about following a breakdown in 2017.
'I got into recovery at the end of 2018 and part of the decision to write books was getting back the love of telling stories,' he explains. 'I was reading a lot of crime novels so I thought I'd have a go.'
In 2019, he attended courses such as the Self Publishing Formula and Your First 10k Readers, read the Chris Fox books Write To Market and Launch To Market, and took advice from Joanna Penn's website The Creative Penn, and podcasts such as Six Figure Authors.
Getting the right cover design for your genre is key, according to McCleave. For crime novels, it needs to look comparable to a Lynda La Plante book – readers need to feel confident they know what they're getting.
He commissioned a designer and an editor to get his work ready for publication and spent £750 on adverts, split between Facebook Ads and Amazon; the ads were targeted at readers of similar crime and police-procedural novels.
After the first week, McCleave asked his wife to check his screen because he thought there was something wrong with the software. He'd sold 2,500. 'I thought, 'How is this possible?''
'The first book sold for 99p,' says McCleave. 'That felt like a price people would be happy to take a chance on. I also gave a pre-order link at the end; the point [at which a] reader will want to read the next book.'
Within six months of releasing his first novel, The Snowdonia Killings, he had given up his job. '[The money] was life-changing by the third book,' he adds. 'Once the series was established, bookshops took hard copies.
'The local element was important,' he continues. 'A lot of early readers were from North Wales and related to the setting.'
McCleave now publishes one-third traditional with HarperCollins and Storm Publishing, two-thirds indie (he has more than three million downloads), which is common for successful self-published writers as they often produce more content than the publishers can handle.
But he has a note of caution for wannabe writers. 'Ads are vastly more expensive now,' he warns. It would now take an ad spend of 10 times the £750 McCleave initially invested to have a comparable impact.
Still, that initial spend turned out to be a wise investment. 'I have a PA, a publicist, two advertising people, an editor, designer and a proofreader.' he says. 'I have creative control for the first time. That's pretty much the dream, isn't it?'
'Right book at the right time'
In just three months in 2012, the debut novel of Jodi Ellen Malpas was downloaded 250,000 times on Amazon. This Man, an erotic romance, was pitched at $5.99, which, with Amazon's generous 70 per cent royalties, earned her north of $1 million in 12 weeks.
Before publishing This Man, she'd spent 10 years doing admin for her father's construction firm in Northampton. She'd left school without finishing her A-levels and had the first of her two sons aged 20.
'Working for my dad was boring as sin,' the 45-year-old admits. 'But I was secretly writing the book. I didn't do well in English at school and I never thought about being an author. But I had a very vivid imagination.'
That creative urge led to her first novel. 'I didn't tell anyone at first because I was alarmed by my own imagination,' she says. 'It was this male character that came to me first: a possessive, over-the-top, neurotic man. People ate him up. He was British and American readers love a bit of British.'
'I didn't know how long a novel was supposed to be,' she continues (industry standard is 80-90,000 words). 'My first was 150,000 words.' Her best friend loved it and persuaded her to self-publish. But unlike McCleave, Malpas hadn't done any planning.
'I did everything wrong,' she says. 'The book wasn't edited. My 11-year-old son designed the cover. I didn't do any advertising. I just waited to see what happened. Readers were looking for the next Fifty Shades by E.L. James [published in 2011]. Those books had created the appetite, so it was the right book at the right time.'
When Malpas viewed her sales the next day, she was delighted to see 16 people had bought it. But that was just the UK. When she checked the US figures, she had sold thousands. 'I thought Amazon was going to call to say there'd been a terrible mistake,' she says.
That call didn't come. Thirteen years later, she has total sales topping six million for her 30 books.
Within days of publishing, Malpas was inundated with agents' offers. She was invited to New York and took her parents. Once there, the agents promised her she would have a book deal within two weeks.
'We walked out of the office opposite Trump Tower and my mum burst into tears,' she says. And, sure enough, a fortnight later, a deal had been signed.
'I've been told people recognise my style,' Malpas explains, when asked what sets her work apart from other erotica. 'I have readers who are so invested in the characters that they know every detail. I also get a lot of 'You saved my marriage' messages.'
'No one says 'no' in the indie world'
'It's a childhood dream come true to have this freedom to create worlds for people,' says British novelist Ben Galley, 37, who now lives in Victoria, Canada, and has so far sold more than 300,000 books.
'The money has unlocked all sorts of things for me that I didn't imagine. No one says 'no' in the indie world.'
In 2010, Galley self-published his debut novel, The Written, set in a fantasy world, Emaneska, which mixes wizards and monsters with a more modern sense of political intrigue.
At the time, he was living in Guildford and studying at the Academy of Contemporary Music. The digital revolution was allowing his peers to publish music without big record companies and he realised that same process could be applied to fiction.
'I did it all myself and learnt a lot,' he says, admitting that he wrote a lot on his phone while holding down bar jobs. 'Now I'm up to 21 titles.'
Galley built his own website and does all his own marketing, although he admits he does pay for an editor. He did relatively little advertising at the beginning because he didn't have the money.
'The first novel did well – about 14,000 sales in the first few months – so I kept pushing them out. But I wasn't earning enough to give up work, so I carried on writing on the side. [With self-publishing] it's usually easier to make a profit than through traditional publishing and I was looking for that tipping point where I could write full-time.
'For me, that was 1,000-1,500 sales a month,' he adds. 'I phased out my other jobs in 2015 and I haven't been in an office for 10 years.'
Galley explains that self-published authors need to connect with readers. Through social media and newsletters, he offers loyal fans special editions, free copies or merchandise. 'I spend an hour a day on interaction and I try to post at least once a day.'
'You have to feed that community; authors share a lot more about themselves than they used to,' he says. 'But the community is very supportive and passionate.'