How Much Have I Earned From My Book Sales? (and how consultants really earn money from books)

You probably won't earn much from book royalties. But, if you're clever, there are plenty of other ways you can earn revenue from your books.

Richard Millington

Oct 17, 2023

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What Have I Earned From My Two Self-Published Books Book?

I’ve written three books.

The first two were self-published and one was published by Pearson.

I’m going to break down what I’ve earned from these books and share some thoughts on whether you should write a book.

I just checked the royalties on KDP for my self-published books. These are the figures as of Sept 8, 2023.

That’s a total of around $70.1k since 2012.

That’s not an insignificant figure, but it’s not a game-changer either. It tracks all the sales stretching back to the publication of my first book in 2012. Even today my self-published books tend to generate $100 to $200 per month. It’s a nice bonus, but covers a couple of meals out a month at most.

This figure also excludes bulk sales I’ve facilitated for my books over the years which would probably add another $10k to $15k.

So, in total, I’ve earned around $80k to $90k from sales of my two self-published books.

What Have I Earned From My Published Book?

The honest truth is I’m not exactly sure. The royalties portal for the publisher has never worked for me and the royalties per copy sold are so small I don’t make much of an effort to find out.

But my best guess (including the advance) is around $7k excluding some bulk sales. So perhaps around $8k in total.

In summary, I’ve earned probably $85k to $95k from book sales.

Lesson From Self-Publishing vs. Published Book

Why You Will Probably Earn Far Less From A Published Book

You might be surprised to discover I earned far more from my self-published books than from my published books.

The common impression is if you’re published you will make a lot of money.

You often hear stories of authors receiving a huge advance to write their books. And that does certainly happen. If you’ve been the CEO of a large organisation or if you have millions of followers on social media it’s not unheard of to get six, even seven, figures for your books.

But the reality is the vast majority of authors (including myself) get a tiny advance (in the $1k to $5k range) which you need to earn out (i.e. sell enough books to cover). Then you get 10% per every copy sold (with increases once you hit 10k, 20k sales etc..).

Generally speaking, you earn $1 to $1.5 per book sold. The publisher keeps the majority of the book’s revenue (they also incur the majority of the costs).

For a self-published book, you get 35% to 75% per every book sold. This equates to $5 to $10 per book. This explains why my earnings from self-published have been so much higher than having a published book. I might sell more copies of my most recent book - but it’s not at a 3 to 1 ratio.

Why Sell Your Book To A Publisher?

There are three major benefits of selling your book to a publisher.

Credibility. Being a published author sounds better than being a self-published author. There is a mark of credibility associated with being chosen by a publishing house.
Quality. A publishing house will also have a team in place to help edit and design your book to a professional level. My first two books never quite achieved the same look and feel as a published book.
Promotion. A publishing house will (in theory) promote your book to an audience that you can’t reach yourself. This primarily means ensuring your book will appear in bookshops. If you ever want to see your book in a bookshop, you need to go with a publisher. This could significantly extend your reach.

It’s worth remembering here that if you do have a huge following, you can earn a huge advance from selling your book. I know a couple of people who have $50k+ from book advances - but these are extremely rare. You usually need to be a major figure in a huge industry.

If you get more than $3k - you’re doing great.

The Downsides Of Selling Your Book to A Publisher

You probably still won’t see your book in bookshops.
There are too many books competing for too few spots in bookshops. This often results in publishers paying for the book to appear in a bookshop (those book rankings you see at airports for example are typically paid for).
Only the larger publishers can afford to do this. So, unless you can sign with a large publishing house, you’re not going to see your book in a shop. But you’re not going to sign with a large publishing house unless you have a large audience to begin with (they don’t like to take risks).
You will probably earn far less than with a self-published book.
My publisher didn’t succeed in getting my book in the shops. In essence, this means I created all the content, undertook all the promotion, and then handed my publisher 90% of the revenue. Even today, if I work hard on a 200+ copy bulk deal, the publisher keeps 90% of that. And this is most likely what will happen to you too if you sign with a publisher.
You will probably cede control.
My publisher owns the right to my book and can do pretty much whatever they want with it. They can sell the audiobook and translation rights as they wish. They can even create a second edition of the book without me.
You will need to pander to the broader audience.
Publishers want to sell as many books as possible. This means they want the book to appeal as many people as possible. This means you will often need to reduce the complexity to make it understandable to people with very little knowledge of the topic.
Limited flexibility.
Because you don’t own the rights to it you’re limited in what you can do with it. Want to create a special discount for a short period of time, create a second edition, or give away half the book for free to build your mailing list? You will have to ask your publisher. We’ll talk more about this later.

Don’t Write Books For The Royalties

I can’t stress this enough.

I’ve spoken to a lot of people considering writing a book.

I often try to steer people away from it. Not because there is anything wrong with writing a book, the process is valuable and it’s fun to see something you’ve created sitting on your bookshelf.

The problem begins when motivations are misaligned with likely outcomes.

Too many people think one of the following will happen:

They will write a book, sell the book to publishers, see it in bookstores and earn a lot of money from it.
They will write the book, self-publish it, and get their acquaintances and contacts to help promote it, and it will begin to spread throughout their industry.

You can find examples of both - but these are the extreme outliers. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it almost certainly won’t happen for you.

The most likely scenario is you will self-publish a book.

This means you will write it, find an editor to make it look okay, and promote it.

You might be able to get friends and acquaintances to promote it too. You will sell a few dozen copies in the first couple of weeks, and then a few copies each month. And that will be it. Here’s a startling stat:

The average business book on Amazon sells just 300 copies.

If you’re not comfortable with only selling 300 copies, don’t write a book

Even published books only tend to sell around 3k to 5k in their lifetime. A good way of thinking about this is to take the size of your mailing list, divide it by 10, and assume that’s the number of people who will buy it (or, with social media, divide by 100 or so).

So, let’s do the maths here.

Let’s assume you charge, $15 per copy and keep 50% of the royalties (which is a generous estimate even on a self-published book). You might earn around $1.5k to $2.5k in total (and then you have to pay tax on that).

I know what most of you are thinking. You’re not average, you’re special!

Your book will be better because of [unique circumstance].

This is precisely why the majority of authors are disappointed with the number of copies their book sells. Your unique circumstance turns out not to be the definitive advantage you thought it was.

This doesn’t mean that writing a book isn’t worth doing. It just means it’s not worth doing for royalties. But there are plenty of other reasons you might want to write a book.

How To Really Make Money From Books

Once you accept you won’t earn much in the way of royalties from books, you can begin to think about how you can leverage books to bring in clients - which is where you truly make money.

This is where I feel self-published books really shine. You just have the ability to do more things with it.

You can build relationships with key people. I undertook 100+ interviews when I wrote The Indispensable Community.
Curiously, people who wouldn’t have given me the time of day if I had asked to ‘pick their brain sometime’ were happy to give me 1hr+ of their time when I said it was for a book. They also helped introduce me to others at their level. Many of the people featured in my books later became our clients.
This book was quite simply the best networking tool I’ve ever deployed. Through the introductions made via the book, I’ve probably generated $700k to $1m in revenue.
Build Your Mailing List. One of the most powerful ways to build my mailing list in the early days was by giving away half of my book for free. These days, at the end of every talk I give, I share a QR code which lets people download one of my books for free. I’ve had almost the entire audience at events join my mailing list as a result. I’ve recently been testing the book offer with social ads. The CTR is twice as high compared with any other opportunity.
I’m tempted to sponsor future events and just have a large QR code on the stall which anyone can scan to download my book.
Non-Google Search Traffic. Amazon is one of the most powerful search engines in the world. Because fewer people write books than ‘create content’, it’s also far less competitive to rank highly. If you optimise your book well, it can be a powerful way to attract new clients through the built-in viral effects of Amazon. However, you have to attract a lot of reviews quite quickly to benefit from this.
You Can Directly Get Your Book Into The Hands Of The Right People. The great thing about having a self-published book is it only costs $2 to $3 to print each copy. This makes bulk purchases a no-brainer. In 2014, Mozcon purchased 1400 copies of my book to give away for free. Other events have also purchased hundreds of copies at a time.
It’s remarkably more effective to offer to send 500 copies of your book to give away at an event for free than actually sponsoring the event. If you play your cards right, you can even do a book signing at the event too. This is an incredible tool to get your books into as many hands as possible. There have been several occasions when I’ve paid out of my own pocket to get my book into the hands of people attending a relevant event.
Sponsorship Revenue. If you want to be really clever, you can see if anyone is willing to sponsor the book. This means having ads within the book itself. It’s not common, but I’ve definitely seen it done.
You Become An Expert In The Topic. A book forces you to become an expert in a topic. When you focus on writing specifically about a narrow topic for a long period of time your expertise in it increases significantly. If you speak to enough people, you will know their precise problems and how to solve them. This should help you develop and design the right services for them.

Where a self-published book shines is when it brings people deep into your ecosystem. Some people will find the book first and then go explore your website, courses, and consultancy efforts. Others will arrive via another channel and only later find your book.

The key thing here is to think creatively about how and whether a book really serves your purpose.

You won’t make much money directly from your book, but if you have other assets from you that people can buy (courses, consultancy, sponsorships etc…) there is a great opportunity to explore.

Writing my books was among the most important things I’ve ever done to build my consultancy practice. It’s not for everyone, but it might be for you.

Richard Millington - Indispensable Consulting

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