I think it’s a good general rule not to join any collective that doesn’t have a proven audience to market to. Take the time to form good relationships with other authors in the community here (and outside of it), and you will get equal or more powerful support, for free, from people who will promote you because they like your work and want to see you succeed. No royalties needed.
And it’s worth pointing out that we’re still in the initial phases of seeing if the "professional" collections (Nerdist, S&L, Geek & Sundry) provide services and marketing that are worth the percentage their collections take. The idea works in theory, and there maybe be initial examples of clear benefits for certain books, but every book is different and there is no guarantee of success for any book. The author still has to do a TON of work, collection or not.
In the interests of getting a slightly clearer impression on the effect of being chosen for each of these collections, I did some research! There are too few books for any sort of statistical analysis to be meaningful, but we can still use this data to help us make informed decisions.
The first contest, for the Sword & Laser collection, started April 1st, 2015. The contest winners’ books came out mostly in a batch in the spring of 2016 (Lost Generation is still in production and will be excellent, I’m certain). I don’t know how many copies of these books were sold pre-release; I’m just going with sales as of today (remember that some of these books have been out longer than others, so that may have an effect on sales numbers). S&L takes 10% of your royalties, and it is unclear whether that is 10% of your new cut under the new royalty structure or 10% of gross receipts.
Contest winner + chosen for the collection:
An Unattractive Vampire - 2,538
Asteroid Made of Dragons - 2,063
The Life Engineered - 1,977
Average: 2,192
Contest winner + not chosen:
Practical Applications of Multiverse Theory - 1,440
Ageless: 1,316
Average: 1,378
There aren’t any other books out for the S&L Collection yet, though there are three in production – two of those were chosen for the collection and are not contest winners, so perhaps we’ll see a difference there. (One is written by a host of the podcast, Tom Merritt, so obviously there’s a connection to the audience there that the other authors in the collection don’t start with.)
The first Nerdist contest started August 15th, 2015. Only two books from the winning group have been released (both this month), but a few more will be released very soon. I did an average of the next two books to be released because that’s the best I have. Nerdist takes 20% of gross receipts, according to the collection specifications; these specifications still say the author gets 30% of gross receipts as well, which is a better cut than the new royalty structure. (I will be interested to see if Inkshares re-negotiates that deal with Nerdist to make it match the new structure or not.)
Contest winner + chosen for the collection:
Welcome to Deadland - 4,813
It’s All Fun and Games – 1,633
Average: 3,223
Contest winner + not chosen (being released soon, numbers will surely jump):
Rise – 1,760
7th Age: Dawn – 1,108
Average: 1,434
I’m sure you can pick out the outlier – Welcome to Deadland is doing really, really well. With so few books out, it’s difficult to tell if there’s a significant difference between how any given book performs based on any single characteristic. We’ll see what happens as more books come out!
(It’s important to note that there is one book that was selected for the Nerdist collection which didn’t win a contest, and has 17 pre-orders. Being chosen for a collection doesn’t guarantee any number of orders.)
It certainly looks like being chosen for a collection when you win a contest will increase your orders by more than their cut of your royalties. It will be interesting to see what happens when the first book chosen for the S&L Collection outside of winning a contest, Deus Hex Machina, does when it is released. I suspect winning a contest provides its own bump in orders, on top of the benefits of full publishing compared to Quill publishing-level services.
You have to take into consideration whether a given collection is a good fit for your book before you commit to giving them part of your royalties. For some people it will be a no-brainer; for others, it might not be. Do what’s best for your book, based on everything that’s possible to take into account!
I think it’s a good general rule not to join any collective that doesn’t have a proven audience to market to. Take the time to form good relationships with other authors in the community here (and outside of it), and you will get equal or more powerful support, for free, from people who will promote you because they like your work and want to see you succeed. No royalties needed.
And it’s worth pointing out that we’re still in the initial phases of seeing if the "professional" collections (Nerdist, S&L, Geek & Sundry) provide services and marketing that are worth the percentage their collections take. The idea works in theory, and there maybe be initial examples of clear benefits for certain books, but every book is different and there is no guarantee of success for any book. The author still has to do a TON of work, collection or not.
In the interests of getting a slightly clearer impression on the effect of being chosen for each of these collections, I did some research! There are too few books for any sort of statistical analysis to be meaningful, but we can still use this data to help us make informed decisions.
The first contest, for the Sword & Laser collection, started April 1st, 2015. The contest winners’ books came out mostly in a batch in the spring of 2016 (Lost Generation is still in production and will be excellent, I’m certain). I don’t know how many copies of these books were sold pre-release; I’m just going with sales as of today (remember that some of these books have been out longer than others, so that may have an effect on sales numbers). S&L takes 10% of your royalties, and it is unclear whether that is 10% of your new cut under the new royalty structure or 10% of gross receipts.
Contest winner + chosen for the collection:
An Unattractive Vampire - 2,538
Asteroid Made of Dragons - 2,063
The Life Engineered - 1,977
Average: 2,192
Contest winner + not chosen:
Practical Applications of Multiverse Theory - 1,440
Ageless: 1,316
Average: 1,378
There aren’t any other books out for the S&L Collection yet, though there are three in production – two of those were chosen for the collection and are not contest winners, so perhaps we’ll see a difference there. (One is written by a host of the podcast, Tom Merritt, so obviously there’s a connection to the audience there that the other authors in the collection don’t start with.)
The first Nerdist contest started August 15th, 2015. Only two books from the winning group have been released (both this month), but a few more will be released very soon. I did an average of the next two books to be released because that’s the best I have. Nerdist takes 20% of gross receipts, according to the collection specifications; these specifications still say the author gets 30% of gross receipts as well, which is a better cut than the new royalty structure. (I will be interested to see if Inkshares re-negotiates that deal with Nerdist to make it match the new structure or not.)
Contest winner + chosen for the collection:
Welcome to Deadland - 4,813
It’s All Fun and Games – 1,633
Average: 3,223
Contest winner + not chosen (being released soon, numbers will surely jump):
Rise – 1,760
7th Age: Dawn – 1,108
Average: 1,434
I’m sure you can pick out the outlier – Welcome to Deadland is doing really, really well. With so few books out, it’s difficult to tell if there’s a significant difference between how any given book performs based on any single characteristic. We’ll see what happens as more books come out!
(It’s important to note that there is one book that was selected for the Nerdist collection which didn’t win a contest, and has 17 pre-orders. Being chosen for a collection doesn’t guarantee any number of orders.)
It certainly looks like being chosen for a collection when you win a contest will increase your orders by more than their cut of your royalties. It will be interesting to see what happens when the first book chosen for the S&L Collection outside of winning a contest, Deus Hex Machina, does when it is released. I suspect winning a contest provides its own bump in orders, on top of the benefits of full publishing compared to Quill publishing-level services.
You have to take into consideration whether a given collection is a good fit for your book before you commit to giving them part of your royalties. For some people it will be a no-brainer; for others, it might not be. Do what’s best for your book, based on everything that’s possible to take into account!