Author Transparency

What we tell each other

I was a huge fan of writing Twitter back in the twenty-teens, but hit the ejection seat button when Elon Musk bought the company and there was a decided change in content and purpose.

I tested out BlueSky and I certainly enjoy the notes function on Substack, but it wasn’t until recently that I moved into the writing space on Threads, Meta’s text-based social media platform.

Threads is the same as writing Twitter was in a lot of ways—writers looking to connect or while away the time in between writing sprints, share writing news, keep up on trends, etc—but I’m also noticing a different slant than when writing Twitter was back in its hay day. There’s a bit of publishing related misinformation, it seems a little harder to make friends on there, but there’s one BIG controversy that’s worth talking more about.

I remember when #publishingpaidme was trending on Twitter. It opened a huge discussion about how publishers generally paid authors of color far less than their white peers.

We learned that SFF giant N. K. Jemisin got only $25K for each book of the Broken Earth series which went on to set a record as it was the first trilogy where every title in the series won a Hugo.

This kind of transparency is important in an industry that is often opaque, especially to newer authors or authors without a strong network that they can straight up ask.

Besides, it’s always exciting to hear of an author doing exceptionally well. Recently on Threads, author Aiden Thomas of Cemetery Boys shared a huge milestone—evidence of 450K units sold.

In true internet fashion, it spurred some angry comments from others, the usual trolls and grumblers, but also, it seemed, jealous writers.

Fortunately, more other authors understand the value of this kind of transparency and have been sharing over the past few weeks to keep this type of communication between authors alive.

I love the idea of pushing back against trolls and celebrating on another’s success. I also know kind of data is hard to come by so I’m compiling a few examples down below to inspire you, and get your brain churning.

Give these authors a follow on Threads and dream big!

Indie author EC Garrett

If you do share a transparency post, never feel like you should apologize or make excuses. Everyone is in their own place on the journey.

Indie author Bink Cummings

This is a neat snapshot of the monthly writing and marketing work she does to equal those sales.

Hybrid (?) author Quenby Olson

This image comes from KDP, so each different color on her chart is a different book title—authors typically have to build a backlist before seeing growth in results, even though a smaller portion of those books might be their bestsellers.

Indie author Sarah Primiano

And I can speak from experience when I say it’s harder to share these kinds of transparency posts when you’re a newer writer or have lower numbers!

I want to state again how invaluable it is when writers share real data about their sales and metrics. It’s unfortunate they often get pushback from a small slice of the internet. By supporting each other in the literary community, we make it a more successful place for all.