It's been said that self-pubbed/small/indy pubbed books are lucky to sell more than 500 books and never make a profit. I don't pay attention to things like that. To me it's all down to the determination of the author and the publisher. Our publishing houses (LL-Publications and Logical-Lust Publications) has started to turn a profit thanks to 1) our business model (ebooks and POD) and our authors. We did run at a loss when starting out, but never much of a loss because we had no plans to go into massive debt. We're a small press and intend to stay that way by not churning out a bunch of books but by being selective. This way, we can produce the authors we like and spend more time and money in making sure our investment in them is a success. And it's paid off! We pay royalties to our authors. They may be small, but we've found that once they get that first royalty check, they get even more inspired to promote themselves and their books and their sales keep improving. So far, our success hasn't been the massive "best seller" that sells hundreds or thousands of books at once and then fades away, but we've been successful with titles that continue to sell month after month. In the end, you define what "successful" means to you, and more often than not your definition is different from someone else's. :-)

Laura, Field Stone sounds wonderful. Best of luck. What I also love about this process, is the collaboration with brilliant art directors, etc. for layout and cover. By helping to put together the final package, I came to understand my own book even better, if that makes sense. Are you creating digital books? If so how are you selling them? Laura J. W. Ryan said:

Hi Jennifer, your topic and group are so timely for me, and I'm so glad to have hooked up with She Writes right now.

I'm being realistic about my goals for Field Stone Press, my mantra has been "one book at a time, one reader at a time". I'm really hoping to make our little press self-sustaining, if we can sell enough books to pay for the costs for the production of future projects that would be great...I got my first royalty from Createspace this week, so that was "sweet"...tho' we're still "in the red" (as far as what my Fred and I have put into our small press endeavor) but no worries...it's worth every penny to be out there, putting our books into the hands of readers who want our books. I've enjoyed listening to the feedback from my readers, most has been awesome (no book burnings so far!) I've had one reader tell me my book made her cry...and then we chatted about the characters like they were old friends, it was so much fun...I'm loving this...

Hi Jennifer, your topic and group are so timely for me, and I'm so glad to have hooked up with She Writes right now. I'm being realistic about my goals for Field Stone Press, my mantra has been "one book at a time, one reader at a time". I'm really hoping to make our little press self-sustaining, if we can sell enough books to pay for the costs for the production of future projects that would be great...I got my first royalty from Createspace this week, so that was "sweet"...tho' we're still "in the red" (as far as what my Fred and I have put into our small press endeavor) but no worries...it's worth every penny to be out there, putting our books into the hands of readers who want our books. I've enjoyed listening to the feedback from my readers, most has been awesome (no book burnings so far!) I've had one reader tell me my book made her cry...and then we chatted about the characters like they were old friends, it was so much fun...I'm loving this...