ROI for the self-published

With all the exciting projects he has going on, we are very grateful that David Badurina has taken some time to contribute to the blog as a guest writer to help inform his fellow writers of self-publishing. 

If you want to know about real-world issues when considering self-publishing versus traditional publishing, read on. You can find out more about David and his fantastic work on Twitter/X, YouTube, Facebook, and on the web.
 

I’d like to take a moment to highlight a few points about ROI for the self-published. Many authors measure their success in the metric that’s most common - cold, hard cash. While that’s not a bad way to look at an investment, there are other ways to measure your success, and particularly the success of a debut self-published novel.

In retail, we have something known as a “loss leader,” an item for sale at lower than the cost of the item in order to make a sale on something with a better margin. Back in my teenage retail-working days at a big box computer store, we’d sell inkjet printers at a few dollars below cost, because the $20 printer cable you needed only cost us $0.73.

In terms of book marketing, there’s a great deal more nuance, so I’m going to kick your ass into gear with some perspective.

In 2020, I self-published The Caretaker. To that point, the only professional credit I had was an unpaid article in a large martial arts publication. I knew I was going self-pub. I wasted no time on agents, querying, query letters, and the associated indigestion. Most important for me was control of that project from start to finish.

You will wear all the hats, and be all the things, because you aren’t getting a marketing team and a budget as a nobody.

I spent a year and a half on The Caretaker for writing and editing, working full time at the day job, and running a martial arts school 5 nights a week for hours each night as well. I was managing three kids, a bad back, and crippling impostor syndrome the entire time. Plus, the sudden death of my big brother (he was 54) and my father (a cancer diagnosis and his last breath inside of a 3-month timeline) 18 months apart. I grieved while I wrote (and in fact, wrote to cope).

I spent around $800 having it professionally edited. I spent about $300 on the cover. There was another $150 on formatting for print/ebook. Conservatively, I’d say $1500 was thrown at that project when I roll in my writing application and some other costs.

Now if I add up all the Mochas I bought when writing at the local coffee shop — you know what, nevermind.

My point is, I’m $1500 deep as a complete nobody with a debut novel. However, what I did was create a YouTube channel and consistently produce content about twice a week for a full two years before the book release. I built the audience so I could have people wanting to buy the book.