How much could I make writting books?

[pokerprop]

This is such a vague question, I know so little about it. Basically there are dozens of topics I feel I could write 60,000 to 100,000 word books, and they'd be valueable reads. What's the money potential for this?

Let's say I wrote a 100,000 word book on sports betting. How would I got about selling it once complete?

[leporello]

Do you mean a book you want published?

Obv you could take the route of selling your own ebook via Clickbank or CJ etc, but i guess you're talking about a real book?

[Bryan]

I think you would need a very strong and well-known reputation as an expert in order to:

1. Get a book published
2. Sell enough copies for it to be worthwhile

You'd probably be better off writing an eBook, and using your skills & connections as an affiliate marketer to sell copies.

[Lenny]

Prop, How about an ebook, then put some links into it and give it out for free?

[pokerprop]

I'm not interested in the e-book direction. One though I had was to perhaps build a large website around the topic and make it a higher end book, says $179.00 per copy and limit it to 300 copies.

I have no idea what it costs to print books. A guess $10 each? so maybe $3,000?. If editor cost me $5,000 that brings cost to an $8,000 guess.

$179.00 x 300 = $53,700. Say 10% fee for processing and charge back (probably is massively high) = $48,330, take $8,000 off. Make $40K to write 100,000 words, 40 cents each?

That sounds like something I could pull off.

What I started thinking was if it would be a better idea to write a book that sells for $29.95 and build a reputation off it. That seems a much more difficult task.

Anyways at this point is just an idea bouncing around my head.

I recently sold 75,000 words of content for $9,000, have extremely high demands for more, and recently turned down and offer to become a paid writer at a massive betting site.

My thought here is too fold. First I don't really like sharing all this info on the net. One or two sites with bits and pieces is fine, but its valuable info I could probably get paid a lot more other ways to share. The second which is larger consideration: could I make money money selling this content to end user direct, via a book?

At this point I'm already well booked for content orders at 12 cents per word. This is more a consideration for say mid next year. Maybe I want to look into the idea then of writing and selling books. Maybe its a horrible idea not sure. Is something i haven't really had time to consider. As far as writing a book where even at a premium someone says that was best information I ever read, well worth price, I can do that (with an editor - which I already have and he's been working wonders for me for many years already) that part I'm sure.

[MJ]

Haha, why not just become a tout and sell a new book of tips every day for $179, j/k but only a bit

[pokerprop]

Haha, why not just become a tout and sell a new book of tips every day for $179, j/k but only a bit

A huge, no thanks! That's a side of the industry I want no part. I don't so much have a problem with the guys selling picks, but more with those who purchase them. For the most part that's the side of the industry rampant with scams, or with honest business men even who despite being honest have a marketing approach that takes advantage of the extremely naive. A large percentage of people who buy these picks are also not only naive but have an extremely unhealthy addiction to gambling. I'd rather encourage those guys to get help, then to try and profit off them.

[TheGooner]

The publishing business is set up to reward PUBLISHERS / RETAILERS not authors.

Typically an author is paid between $1-$2 per copy for each book, depending on their previous standing - the rest goes to publishers, agents, and retailers.

Interesting, these new portable electronic readers (Kindle/Sony) are offering an alternative options for writers, making it easy to get works electronically published and at a much better reward.

Instead of costing $30-$40 per book, these can be downloaded for about $8-$10 - a staggering saving for the consumer - and the writer is typically paid around half the list price ($4-$5) - as there are very few overheads.

The downside is that we are still in the early adopter phase - so unit sales are less than physical book.

Another downside is that the subject of sports betting will be a niche market - I just checked the Amazon.com site and found that the best selling sports betting book is Amazon sales rank #26000 or so. And that means around 20-30 copies sold per week.

See this site for that graph and quite a bit of intersting stuff on self-publishing.
Amazon Sales Rank - Sales Ranks For Amazon Self Publishing and Trade Books

Hope it helps mate!

[pokerprop]

Great info, thanks.

Also makes me realize I account for 1-3% percent of that niches Amazon sales volume each month. I'll admit I have book shelves full of books that suck and I stopped after reading a few pages of each chapter. But at the same time this also shows why there is so much money in betting because so few people want to learn. I'm fine with that though. Looks like website content will be better option. Perhaps going forward though I'll make a (non affiliate) site for myself and only sell strategy articles to those including my alias as the author.

Anyways busy for now and appreciate those stats, as no way does the $30 per book option work there.

[Randy Ray]

If you self-publish, you can make a decent amount of money. John T. Reed's book about self publishing how-to books is invaluable, and he goes into a lot of detail about how much you can make. I'll go look up his estimates in my copy and post some info here, but the $30 for the book is well worth the expenditure: How to Write, Publish, and Sell Your Own How-To Book by John T. Reed

(His other books are excellent too. I have all of his real estate investing books, his book Succeeding. I'll probably eventually buy his books on coaching youth baseball and football just because I enjoy his writing so much, even though those subjects don't have much practical value for me.