CREATE AN E-BOOK IN LESS THAN 1 HOUR THAT MAKES YOU MONEY!!!

“Does anyone still dispute the viability of self-publishing?” Let’s Get Digital blogger David Gaughran asks. “I can list well over 100 authors who are selling more than 1,000 [e-]books a month … and more than 200 authors who have sold more than 50,000 [e-]books in the last year or two.”

Such reports of head-turning success have attracted not only newer authors, but also established ones looking to grow their careers in new directions or maintain more control over what happens to their work. “In the digital world an author can do just as much as a publisher can do,” says bestseller James Scott Bell, who continues to traditionally publish fiction and nonfiction but has recently found success rounding out his body of work with independently published e-books. “So viable is almost the wrong word. It’s more like ‘probable.’ And that’s the challenge big publishers are facing now—how to bring value to an author in the digital realm that the author cannot generate on his own.”

But just because self-published authors can find success with e-books doesn’t mean that reflects the typical experience of unknowns releasing digital titles. “There are only so many readers browsing for new books, and by definition not every writer can be lucky,” says Dave Morris, London-based author and creator of a new interactive app based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. “[But] if you feel you are brilliant at marketing, a passable writer, and have at least enough luck to be one of Napoleon’s generals, go to it.”

For many writers, though, making money with e-books isn’t about the pursuit of chart-topping success. It’s about finding an outlet to publish work that traditional publishers would not find commercially viable enough to compete in the marketplace. After all, even modest earnings from such work are better than no earnings at all.

Kindle Singles offer one such outlet. These shorter e-books, typically 5,000–30,000 words, can be accessible vehicles for short fiction and other types of work that have no real lucrative counterparts in the print marketplace, and can also be an attractive way for writers to release more material more quickly.

Bell, for example, has found that his publishers haven’t shown interest in his e-single novellas—but his independent releases of them complement his other work both financially and creatively. For authors like Bell, that kind of career growth outweighs the downside—namely, the low $0.99–2.99 price point that is typical for Kindle Singles, necessitating significant sales to turn a reasonable profit.

Orna Ross, who leads the Alliance of Independent Authors, has published short e-books of poetry and meditations, and is satisfied with lower sales figures more realistic for those genres. “Any attempt to treat the kind of books I write from a purely business perspective would be doomed—life would become very miserable because I’d be chasing a chimera. And for me, it would take away the point of self-publishing—I’m not about to replicate the very aspects of trade publishing that caused me to leave,” she says. “Self-publishing allows me to work from a creative model which does not focus primarily on short-term sales strategies, but which trusts in the creative process itself to sell the books as well as get them written.”