Author Life, Book Sales – Reflections.
benebell.wen
It’s been almost a calendar year since my last newsletter update. I have some housekeeping I’d like to get out of the way first.
ConVocation 2025
I've been selected as one of the Guests of Honor for ConVocation 2025 (**yay!**), which will be in Ypsilanti, Michigan on February 20 – 23, 2025. Christopher Penczak, Priestess Stephanie Rose Bird, Mat Auryn, and Devin Hunter are the other Guests of Honor. This will be the 30th year anniversary of this incredible conference. The theme is Malkuth: Explore and Build Pathways to the Divine.
I hope to be seeing you there! You can register and learn more about the event here: https://www.convocation.org/register-how-to
Okay, here’s where I need your help. Typically, Guests of Honor present three master classes. I’m having trouble finalizing which three out of four class topics I’ve come up with. So if you would be so kind, read through the four master class descriptions and share your feedback on which three of these four you would want to attend at an event like ConVocation.
Apart from the tarot offering, you’ll notice that the other lectures I’m planning all seem to be variations orbiting one particular theme. Timing wise, this is simply representative of the main topics I’ve been tackling in real life, from a practical and practitioner’s standpoint.
Here are the four I’ve been thinking about, but please help by sharing which three you think would make the most sense to present as a Guest of Honor.
1 - Soul Retrieval: Theory and Practice
Soul retrieval is a form of faith healing. It is premised on the folk belief that imbalances in the mind or body are caused by fragmentation of the soul. Historically, what we now identify as chronic physical conditions, anxiety or depressive disorders, mania, and SUDs, among other behavioral afflictions, were attributed to aspects of the soul wandering out of the body and getting lost, or getting stolen by demons. A ritual to call the soul back home – soul retrieval – was seen as the cure. After a discussion on the cultural practice of soul retrieval found across various folk Asian traditions, we’ll outline the core principles of soul retrieval practice and how a modern-day practitioner can apply those core principles to perform soul retrieval today. Essential practitioner ethics will be discussed as well.
2 - What Buddhist Mysticism Teaches Us About Death
In Buddhism, death is the start of another life, or another stage of our soul’s evolutionary journey. Dying is a transition process where we are still fully cognizant of all that is going on around us, and arising from that belief are various traditions of mystical practice to ease and facilitate that transition process. This will be a lecture on the four categories of death from a Buddhist perspective and how to assess the sensations of death that the dying is experiencing. We’ll also cover the six realms that a soul might transition and be reborn into, based on karma, and what karma even means. For cultural context, we’ll also talk about East Asian Buddhist burial and funerary customs.
3 - Exorcism Fundamentals
Exorcism is the religious or spiritual practice of expelling malefic spirit entities from a body of physical matter, be that a person, an object, or a place. It is premised on the understanding that the presence of the malefic spirit entity, or its possession over a sentient body, is causing harm that cannot otherwise be explained through rationalism or science. Exorcistic rituals are often done through a cultural or religious framework, involving prayers, incantations, use of sacred and consecrated tools, and the presence of religious iconography. Each one of these elements to an exorcistic ritual hold core meaning, which we will explore in this discussion. While the intent is not for attendees to leave as bona fide exorcists, the objective is to give you a basic toolkit of knowledge and essential “break glass in case of emergency” techniques in exorcistic practice.
4 - An Overview of Occult Influences in the Tarot
For those who missed the debut presentation of this topic at StaarCon 2023 in Florida, this is a nuts and bolts foundational primer on the advent of occult tarot, who the key players were, and how esotericism popularized during 18th century France continues to influence occultism in tarot today. We’ll be covering the implications of esoteric teachings hidden in plain sight, and the five key influences: Hermeticism, Pythagorean mysticism, Hellenistic Astrology, Renaissance Alchemy, and the Kabbalah. We’ll then explore how these five influences converge through the lenses of Gnosticism, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry, lending themselves to the architectural design of esoteric tarots.
So please let me know which 3 of those 4 options you think would be most interesting to present on at ConVocation next year. You can hit “reply” to this e-mail newsletter to share your thoughts.
Last 30 Decks of SKT Revelation
Our second print run of the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, Revelation Edition is down to 30 copies. We have no plans of re-printing and continuing sales of SKT for the foreseeable future. My next deck offering is going to be the Etteilla Tarot, which as of this writing, is only halfway done.
Which is to say once we sell out of these remaining 30 copies, the SKT will go out of print. We do not plan on bringing it back in print for at least another 5 years. And that’s not to say we will reprint in 5 years. It’s just to say that in 5 years, James and I will reconvene to assess what our thoughts are.
When you self-publish a deck and do all sales and distribution yourself, from your home, it’s a Project. The stacks of boxes occupy a lot of space in the home. Rooms and office space are basically off limits for anything else, reserved exclusively for packing the decks. And then your mind and attention, at all times, remains continually tethered to the project, non-stop, until you sell out. It’s a constant, never-ending administration of shipping decks, coordinating with the post office, chasing down lost packages, and staying atop customer service obligations.
And so we need a break. =) If you don’t have a copy of the SKT Revelation and think you might want one, then now is the time to put in your order before we sell out. Visit: https://benebellwen.com/skt/pre-order/ (ignore the URL reference to “pre-orders” – the URL was set back when we were still in the pre-order phase, and is now permanent; we’re in the “order” phase).
Author Life, Book Sales – Reflections.
I was motivated to share this personal (and I guess professional) data after hearing many wild assumptions about book sales and being a traditionally published author. Here are my numbers so you have at least one actual case study for reference. The objective here is to provide a clearer line of sight into something I feel like people speculate a lot about, but never get any concrete data around. So here's some data.
It’s important to note the category of books, because it’s going to be really different for each category. Writing on tarot, Taoist mysticism, and I Ching divination is, I suppose, “Mind, Body, Spirit” nonfiction.
I’m hoping this disclosure of actual author sales figures will be useful context. My transparency is your power. And I’m hoping that knowledge of these figures will empower you. Opaqueness only benefits The System.
If we go off numbers alone, then my third book, I Ching, The Oracle has been leaps and bounds more successful than my previous two books. Which is remarkable to me, considering how tarot books in general are a lot more popular and in demand than I Ching books. I genuinely had braced myself for Book 3 to maybe not do too well sales wise, but to just be an “important” (subjective, my opinion, what I would say to comfort myself) contribution to the world of I Ching.
Looking back at my records from 2015, when Holistic Tarot launched, my first print run of 2,500 copies sold out within four months of the release date and my first royalties check (accounting for 6 months) was a little over $2,000. For some math perspective, that’s earning roughly $300 per month for Holistic Tarot book sales. I know. I was really raking in the dough there. And by most accounts, Holistic Tarot was considered a very successful tarot book.
In 2023 for I Ching, The Oracle, the first print run was 25,000 copies (yes, compare that to the first print run ordered for Holistic Tarot, which was 2,500). Likewise, my first royalties check received after publication was for a little over $20,000. Though that was the total received for three books (Holistic Tarot, Tao of Craft, and the initial sales for I Ching, The Oracle), more than half of that came from I Ching first-six-months sales. And remember that the royalties payment is only after you’ve earned out your advance, which was paid to you upon contract signing. So those are royalties after earning out my advance.
I tried to find equivalent records for my second book, The Tao of Craft, but I didn’t save any. This is so funny to me, considering that Tao of Craft is the “middle child” book and the jokes people tell about how parents often treat the middle child.
Because Holistic Tarot was my first book publication ever, I was pretty excited, had no idea what to expect, and so kept track of every “first.” That’s why I have a scan of my first royalties check, saved the very first sales record Excel sheet the publisher sent me, and kept a well-tracked sales log for at least a full year before I realized I didn’t quite care as much as I thought I would. I remember (fondly) how at the start of every month, for a whole year, I’d contact the publisher’s accounting department and request a copy of last month’s sales figures, and check that against the Nielson whatever-whatever (authors know what I’m talking about; I forgot what it’s called exactly because I haven’t bothered checking my Nielson whatever-whatever since 2016).
However, by Book 2, the “middle child” book, I stopped tracking, and didn’t save any records. And so now I have no easy way to go back and check number of copies printed for the first print run, or what my first royalties check for The Tao of Craft was, when I earned out the advance, or what Year 1 of sales looked like. And I have no logged info for my Nielson whatever-whatever for Tao. By Book 2, my attitude was “it is what it is” so I didn’t pay attention to the numbers.
I hadn’t planned on caring about Book 3 numbers, except when I got that first royalties statement, I had to do a double-take, thinking maybe my eyeballs misplaced the comma. This is also interesting in light of global statistics, where Publishers Weekly noted that 2023 book sales fell quite a bit. And this plummet is coming after the industry experienced quite the boom during the pandemic, but 2023 global figures are still higher than pre-pandemic book sales. So collectively we are buying more books with every year, but currently we’re not buying as many books as we purchased during lockdown. Guess that makes sense.
Another 2023 Publishers Weekly figure sets the average copies of a traditionally published book an author will sell in the book’s lifetime is 3,000 copies, with the immediate follow-up caveat that this “average” is meaningless. Because statistics will vary depending on the category, and the overwhelming majority sell far below 3,000, but the average is calculated based on them plus the fluke bestsellers selling millions of copies. The weight of the publishing industry is basically carried by a handful of highly successful authors, while the 99% are well below that 3,000 "average."
Speaking of averages, since 2015, and this is in aggregate for all books published up to that date, I receive somewhere between $2,000 and $6,000 per royalties check, and I get two checks per year, one paid out around January, and the second paid out around July. That means on a good year, I made about $800 per month that calendar year, for two books, by the way, because Tao of Craft was out by 2016. Those two books were released back to back. I Ching didn’t come until 7 years later, in 2023.
Also, now you see why I stopped keeping track of the numbers. They were de minimis for me, and whether I got a check for $2k or a check for $6k really didn’t make much of a difference, so whatever came in the mail was a pleasant, happy surprise.
Per my publishing contracts, my royalties are on a tiered schedule of percentages, so if I sell up to 5,000 copies, it’s X%, and then between 5,001 and 10,000, it’s an increased percentage, and then over 10,001 it’s yet another increased percentage, with different percentages between print and digital books sold.
Equating $2 royalties earned to 1 (one) book sold isn’t exact, but for very general calculating purposes, it works here. So, imperfectly, when I say I got a royalties check for $5,000, it equals more or less approximately 2,500 copies sold. If my royalties statement said I earned $1,500, it means I sold 750 copies of that book. At least that’s my best guess at how it works, based on noodling the numbers.
As of first quarter 2024, Holistic Tarot is and has been earning at the highest percentage, which tells me I’ve sold over 10K copies of it since 2015, but exactly how many over 10K, I don’t have exact data for that. For funsies, I checked BookScan and in the last 2 years, I sold 7,507 paperback units of Holistic Tarot. If I can make the assumption of an average 3,753 copies of the print book sold per year, then by the close of 2024, I estimate that I’ve sold approximately 37,630 print copies of Book 1. Damn, I really should have thought about negotiating additional royalty tiers for my Book 1 contract. But back then, it was beyond my imagination and presumption of personal potential that I would sell more than 10,000 copies of my book, so it didn’t even occur to me I might need another tier. As for Tao of Craft, it’s currently earning at the second tier, so that means I can assume I’ve sold somewhere between 5,001 and 10,000 copies of Book 2.
What’s my conclusion from all that data? I’m happy. By my own standards, my books did well. In a blog post from earlier this year, “Are Personal Branding Pressures on Authors Resulting in Bad Books?” I reflect on why Book 2 didn’t do as well as either Book 1 or Book 3, and I speculated that it’s because Holistic Tarot pigeon-holed me a bit too much into the tarot space only, and so I didn’t have the right “personal brand” or author platform set up for Tao of Craft to do well. And then over the next 7 years, I developed that author platform in a way that set up Book 3, I Ching, The Oracle for success.
So I would say yes, my publishing experience affirms this notion that personal branding and author platform will determine book sales. I think that reality is awful and unsettling. Because it offends the justice of meritocracy. Just because you wrote the book of the century doesn't mean it will succeed. And just because you wrote a shit book doesn't mean it will fail. Merit will only take you so far. More than merit, your branding and public persona will determine how well your books do. And that's a yucky feeling.
My other takeaway from the data is that even as an author who is successful in my niche category of books, I can’t make writing books my day job. Writing books, at least at my small-pond level, has to be a passion project. For me at least, keeping it a passion project gives me a significant amount of leverage and room for creative risk-taking. When you approach it as a passion project, you don't feel any pressure to write to market. And that is very liberating.
As for what’s next as an author…
I am currently at work on creating a truncated and edited version of I Ching, The Oracle for audio book. The 900+ page hardcover printed book version simply read aloud doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially considering how reliant the book version is on charts and tables. An audio book version is going to focus primarily on the I Ching itself, in Chinese, and then the English translation of the line text. Then there will be a few additional chapters narrated, and all of it needs to be reworked with the intention of oral/audio transmission. I won’t be the narrator, however. The publisher will be putting out a call for auditions and hiring a pro.
I’m also mulling over Book 4. Which direction I want to go in is still to be determined. That’s another weird thing about the life of an author – as soon as one book is done, you’re already thinking about what your next book project will be. It’s like, why. Can’t you hit pause and just enjoy the moment? Sigh.
Reflections on Personal Leadership
At an executive leadership training seminar I attended, participants were asked to reflect on three questions:
1. What are you most proud of, right now in this moment?
2. What kind of leader do you want to be?
3. What is one thing you're going to do to get there?
Have you thought about how you might answer these three questions for yourself? Especially what your personal call-to-action is in response to question 3?
In response to question 1, right now, I'm most proud of having published these three books. Question 2 is the one I struggle with, and really didn't know how to respond or contribute to during the actual seminar. Because the most honest, raw answer is I don't want to be a leader. And then I feel kind of bad for not wanting to be a leader, because what competent, ambitious, worthy achiever doesn't want to be a leader? So if I don't want to be a leader, does that make me... beta?
I think like most people, I would like to be influential, to know that I have helped others achieve their ambitions. I want to be a supporter, not a leader. And since I struggled with question 2, I also struggled with responding to question 3. Ack.
Anyway, sharing those three thought-provoking questions with you because I do think they're worth your while to reflect on.
Free Downloads
For those who didn’t know, you can check an archive of free downloads and reference materials I’ve shared on my website via this link: https://benebellwen.com/category/free-download/
Every time I flag a blog post as containing a free PDF or DOCX file download, the post gets aggregated in that archive. So you can always return to that hyperlink and just scroll through the titles to see what interests you.
All right. That's my newsletter for now. Maybe I'll manage to get out a second newsletter for 2024. Or maybe I won't. Hard to say either way.
Toward a greater collective,
bell