Tag: self-publishing

What I Learned Doing 42 Comic Cons in 2025 (part two): Costs & Cashflow

I’m Mark Stay, author of the Witches of Woodville series and The End of Magic trilogy and welcome to the second episode where I’m sharing what I’ve learned from doing 42 comic cons in 2025…

Part One: why do it & the different kinds of comic cons

Let’s talk about costs, sales targets and cashflow. Ooh, exciting! This episode all stems from one very long question from…

ZOË RICHARDS, author of Tell it to the Bees and Garden of her Heart (not an author of fantasy or science fiction, but she sells at craft markets)

Zoë asks: What do you class as a good day/event?

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Mark Stay, author of the Witches of Woodville series and The End of Magic trilogy and welcome to the second episode where I’m sharing what I’ve learned from doing 42 comic cons in 2025…

Let’s talk about costs, sales targets and cashflow. Ooh, exciting! This episode all stems from one very long question from…

ZOË RICHARDS, author of Tell it to the Bees and Garden of her Heart (not an author of fantasy or science fiction, but she sells at craft markets)

Zoë asks: What do you class as a good day/event?

I’m not after sales figures, rather the formula you use. This is what I’m using, and I’d love to know if it aligns with yours.

Zoë lists her costs as…

• cost of stall

• additional costs (travel, parking, refreshments)

• depreciation costs (banner, bookmarks, table cloth, display materials)

• Costs for debit card sales (each sale incurs a small fee)

• cost of books ordered (like me, she gets author copies from her publisher at 50% RRP)

Then Zoë tallies that against her:

• targeted sales

• actual sales

• income from sales 

And the final result is:

• Total income from sales

• Minus total costs

Zoë continues: Is this the right approach? I find myself wondering if I’m doing well or wasting my time. I don’t have opportunities for comic con events as I write the wrong kind of books so mine are craft markets, which don’t always attract readers. 

Thanks Zoë and that’s pretty much the approach that I take: I tot up my costs, then estimate how many books I need to sell to cover those costs and target myself accordingly. You can tell I was a sales rep, can’t you?

I keep a spreadsheet with how much the table costs me and the estimated petrol expenses (I use the RAC calculator).

So I can tell you now that in 2025, I sold 1974 books, with a turnover of just over £20k, spent nearly £2.5 on petrol, and nearly £3k booking the events.

What I don’t track are those depreciative costs: the banners, the tablecloths, the bookmarks (and I’ll talk more about them when I do a tour of my table in the next episode)…

And I don’t track my biggest expense: stock (£6.4k in 2025),… because it’s the expense that never stops and presents its own issue: cashflow.

Now if you’re just starting out, and only have one or two books to sell, go and fetch the smallest of your violins because this is where I complain about the expense of having to regularly stock up on 9-10 published books. It ain’t cheap… 

Like Zoë, I get my Witches of Woodville books from my publisher, Simon & Schuster, at a 50% discount. And I get my self-published books from Bookvault and they cost between £5-6 per copy.

What am I complaining about? That sounds like a good markup… Well, I’ve realised that in order to have the stock arrive in time, I have to place the stock order two weeks ahead of the event. 

So if I’m coming off the back of two smaller, quiet events and then have to order for one of the bigger comic cons, and if I’m doing this every weekend, then I’m often out of pocket. Big time.

Yes, there’s a good chance that I’ll make my money back in a couple of weeks at the bigger event, but it means that I often end up overdrawn and it gets a bit squeaky bum time… and that’s why I’m not doing this for the money. Because, by the time you’ve totted up your expenses (I’m also paying for editors and artists and other expenses through my company, including two salaries) and paid your taxes and your VAT bill every quarter, there sort of isn’t any left.

What I get instead are readers. 1974 books that I personally signed and handed directly to readers. That’s a much stronger connection than selling something on Kindle for 99p to someone in Buttmunch, Indiana… That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. And no offence to the good people of Buttmunch. Go, Buttmunchers!

But hey, in 2026 the plan is to sell even more books! I’ve got a 5 book series, and now a completed trilogy, and more books on the way. So in the next episode, we’re going to talk about sales, and how to sell, and the tools for selling. I’ll even take you on a tour of my table. Ooh! Exciting, eh?

MISSED PART ONE? CATCH UP HERE…
part three: running the stand & a table tour

If you’ve found this helpful, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi…

I’ve Been a Published Author for Ten Years

Crikey!

Buy a signed copy here
listen to the podcast

TRANSCRIPT

10 years ago today this baby was published, meaning I’ve been a published author for 10 years which is a bit of a pinch me moment… Yeah, amazing. I want to thank Jon Wright who asked me to co-write the film, but for the book I really want to thank Gillian Redfearn the editor at Gollancz who held my hand through the whole publishing process and editorial process, Lisa Rogers the amazing copy editor who I still beg to be my copy editor today because she’s just the best in the business, and also Genn McMenemy in marketing who uh still has lots of embarrassing outtakes of me floundering and trying to sell the book on on camera, and everyone who read it and said nice things about it. Thank you, everyone. Like I say I am really proud of it. The Authorized Podcast did a 10th anniversary special where they talked about the book and then I talk about how it was made and everything in a lot more detail… But there are things in here, you know, there’s uh there’s the short story in the back, The Mediator Prototype, I also have my shoot diaries about the making of the film and also put the name of every member of the cast and crew in the hope that they would all buy a copy which I’m sure they did. 10 years today, still in print, which probably says something… I don’t know what, but if you want a signed copy you can get one from my store, if not I think it’s ridiculously cheap on eBook as well the audiobook… Rupert Degas reads the audio! Terrific. Anyway 10 years. Wow. Gotta get a cup of tea.

The End of Magic is a year old today (and here are the diaries to prove it)

Good gravy, can The End of Magic really be a year old already? I guess if you’ve been keeping up with the blog and me constantly banging on about it, it must feel more like a decade, but as I get older the years become more of a blur and it’s good to take stock occasionally.

Below are some select diary entries from around the time of publication, along with a few asides to put them in perspective. Once again, a huge thank you to everyone who supported the book. It would not have been possible without you.

Monday 28th January

The End of Magic has arrived!

My finished copies were delivered this afternoon and I’m very happy with them. They’re reassuringly chunky, the spot UV on the cover will help them stand out, and the cover art is magnificent in the flesh.

Claire and Emily helped with a little social media video where we played out the where George McFly gets his books and I’m happy to say it’s getting lots of love online.

Wednesday 30th January

A good writing start this morning, but when I had a mid-morning cuppa I checked social media and discovered that folk were getting their copies of The End of Magic! There followed a day of social media madness as the good people who pledged for the book sent photos and congratulations. It was euphoric, overwhelming, and I could get very used to it.

I have an email dated 5th February where I inform Unbound that a reader noticed two typos. This is pretty standard with any book, despite all the proofreading. We fixed the eBooks pronto.

Wednesday 6th February

No writing today for two reasons…

  1. It’s publication tomorrow and there’s all sorts of bits of social media to prepare, and…
  2. My MacBook went kaput yesterday. The keyboard and trackpad wouldn’t respond.

I took it to Stormfront this afternoon and the guy held it up to his ear. “I think there’s something rattling about in there,” he said. He ran a diagnostic, restored it a few times and it was fine. Phew.

Friday 8th February 2019

The End of Magic is out now!

Well, yesterday… Quite an exhausting day yesterday, so let’s take it one step at a time.

Yes, the book is out and off to a good start with reviews: three five-star reviews on Amazon, and a four and a five on Goodreads.

I had a day in London yesterday, starting with an attempt at uploading all kinds of social media for the book via the wifi at Waterstones, Tottenham Court Road. It was too slow to the point of stopping, so I took myself off to the Byron at Farringdon where I was meeting Graeme (author Gray Williams) for lunch, got there early and gobbled up most of my spare data using the hotspot on my phone*

*It still astonishes me how much money I spend on data

(After lunch I met with two of my uncles who showed me where they grew up with my dad. We’ll skip that bit!)

After that I met with writer and comedian Caimh McDonnell. We’re both Ed Wilson’s clients and Caimh is a fan of the podcast. I interviewed him and we had a good chat and drink afterwards. He’s a great guy — generous and funny.

And finally I made my way to the Inn on the Court for Gollancz drinks. Great to catch up with Gavin Smith, Chris Wooding, Ed Cox and Joe Hill.*

*Yes, I do shameless namedropping even in my own diary. It’s partly why I started a diary. I kept meeting amazing people and then forgetting that I met them.

Told you, my memory is like a sieve.

This morning I put together a couple of ad campaigns and caught up on emails.

Tonight, Claire and I went to Vicky Newham’s book launch at Harbour Books and chatted with Vicky and her editor Clio.

It was around this time that I discovered that Unbound had published the eBook with two of the chapters in the wrong order! A bit of a panic as I kept readers updated, while Unbound made the fix. To be fair, they were pretty quick about it.

Thursday 14th February

Tonight I drove down to Tunbridge Wells for the Dominic King show (on BBC Radio Kent) and I got to plug the book and tomorrow’s launch big time. Also started to notice that complete strangers are mentioning me and The End of Magic and saying nice things. Exciting stuff!

Saturday 16th February

Last night was the launch party for The End of Magic and I’m still coming down from the giddy high it gave me.

Claire made amazing cupcakes, George handed them out and charmed the crowd (Yes! A crowd — 20+ people), and Emily live-streamed it and did cool time-lapse videos.

Rich Boarman — The Steam Wizard! — was there with Steam Witch Katie, and the Steam Sorcerer Andrew, and they stood by the door of Harbour Books getting admiring honks from passing cars and drawing the punters in.

Rich, Andrew and Katie and I’m wielding the staff that Rich made to commemorate the launch.

(There’s a bit here where I name people who turned up, but I’m bound to have forgotten someone, so I’m leaving it out here)

I gave a speech thanking basically everyone I know, I read a short extract, and I offered to donate a pound for every copy sold to Nordoff Robbins as part of Jason Ritchie’s 50 Gigs in a Day event (we raised forty quid!).

It was overwhelming. Olivia (from Harbour Books) said it was one of the best and busiest launches they could remember.

Once we figured out how to fit the magic staff in the car — it had been presented to me at the start of the event by Rich, and it is magnificent! — we went for chips.

What an incredible evening.

Saturday 23rd February

Faversham Literary Festival

In the evening I was back for my event with David John Griffin. We had about twenty people and it was good event with excellent questions. We started selling our own books, but then the room was swamped by bloody poets turning up for their open mic session, so few people could actually get close to us… Which was not conducive to sales.

It was around this time that I started planning to self-publish The End of Magic in the US. Unbound don’t have much of a presence there, and I fancied self-publishing it after my experiences with Back to Reality. This had all been agreed at the contract stage with Unbound, but they still fed their edition out to the world, including the US. Having seen this sort of thing happen many times when I was Orion, I knew it was a simple fix and I asked Unbound to sort the feed. They promptly did… but also accidentally removed it from the UK Amazon store… This was after a successful AMS ad campaign that placed it in the top 100 Fantasy titles. It never really got the same momentum again. Sigh.

Friday 8th March

I sent a signed a contract to Amazon for The End of Magic, finally proving that I have US rights, so with any luck I can get that live soon, too.

And thus ended a barrage of emails between me, Unbound and Amazon sorting the rights situation. Would I do it again? Possibly, but it was a right old faff and accidentally removing the book from Amazon was a real blow. Amazon’s algorithms were behind me, I was making my up the charts and becoming more and more visible and then… nothing. Ah well. Onwards. Upwards.

The question I get asked the most is will there be a sequel. Probably not. At least, not with Unbound. As publisher, they have first dibs on any sequels and I don’t fancy going through the fundraising process again, lest I become like that guy in the office who goes on a 5k charity fun run every few months and expects you to donate every time (that said, I am mulling over the idea of doing a Kickstarter for something very different). I have ideas for a sequel, but I had planned for the book to work as a stand-alone, which is does.

The biggest surprise is how many reviews I get that say, “I don’t normally read fantasy, but I really enjoyed this.” That’s my market. Which might explain why it’s been so blooming difficult trying to target them with ads to keep the sale momentum.

But I must stop griping. Overall, The End of Magic has been a terrific experience. I had great editors, fantastic cover art, and incredible support from readers.

Thank you all!

If you want to buy The End of Magic, it’s available from all the usual places, and also here.

I got a rejection this week… and I’m in good company…

I loved this Tweet from VE Schwab asking authors if they had received rejections of their work recently…

She was deluged with replies, some from some very big names, and one from me. Only last week, I had a book pitch rejected by a publisher. The response I got was, “We pissed ourselves laughing, we loved it, we just don’t know how to sell it.” And that’s fine. I appreciate the honesty and know that there would be nothing worse than slogging away on a novel for however many months only for the publisher to give a shrug on publication.

I more positive news I was inspired by blog posts from a couple of writers friends. Julian Barr talks about what he strives for here, and Laurence Doherty talks about working up from rejections to the NI New Writers Focus Scheme here.

And the big treat for the week is the Bestseller Experiment live show with Orion editor Emad Akhtar (pictured above). He answered all sorts of listener questions on writing, editing, storytelling and WWE wrestling… Yes really. You can listen here.

Till next time, happy writing!

A ghostwriter, an archaeologist and a wizard walk into a bar…

On this week’s Bestseller Experiment podcast I spoke to Ghostwriter Roz Morris, who gives a very thorough breakdown of how a ghostwriter works, and also describes a fun way of developing story ideas that involves scraps of paper and a box.

Mark Desvaux has had to bow out of the podcast for a few episodes due to a family illness, so I was ably assisted by Jenn McMenemy who, as well being on the podcast as a guest previously, has also launched her own podcast Ancient History Fangirl, which is huge fun and proves once again that history is a great resource for writers.

This week’s Deep Dive podcast is a cracker, looking into audiobooks, the fastest growing sector of publishing. We talk to Orion Audio’s Paul Stark about mainstream audiobook publishing, and we also get contributions from indie authors Jo Ho and Michael R Miller. It’s choc full of ready detailed info, so if you’re not a Patreon supporter pop over to our Patreon page and get on board!

And finally, at the time of writing I’m 59% funded on my book The End of Magic. A thousand thanks to everyone who’s pledged so far, and if you haven’t joined the adventure yet, why not be the hero who nudges me over to 60%? Click here and hit the blue pledge button.

Till next time, happy writing!

 

Mark

Metadata and other mysteries…

Howdy hey!

Yes, that’s the BBC microphone muffler I found in the gutter in Oxford Circus last week…

I mention this as it’s one of the many highlights from last week’s Bestseller experiment live show that are now available to plug directly into your earholes via the medium of podcast. Click here for audio fun time.

Thanks to snowmaggeddon I had to record this one at home, but the usually flaky BT broadband actually held up and a splendid time was had by all. We discussed…

  • The dark secrets of metadata and how you can make it work for your books
  • How you can make a blog work harder
  • Tips for when you’re stuck on your outline
  • Why you should celebrate weaknesses
  • The pros and cons of present tense versus past tense
  • We discover what “brain tabs” are, and we discuss top tips for avoiding distractions while writing

The question from Edward Kane on tenses was a fun one to answer, though I’ve since realised that my erudite rambling could be cut down to two simple principles:

The present tense works better for unreliable narrators

The past tense works better for reliable narrators

And the less we will say about the future tense the better*

And here’s a link to the Action Force Palitoy book we mentioned in our conversation about crowdfunding. It really is ace, if that’s your thing.

And speaking of crowdfunding… did you know that Betseller Experiment listeners get 10% off when they pledge for my new book The End of Magic? Go here, click pledge and type bestsellerxp when prompted.

Oh, and Dominic did me a new sting…!

Thank you and till next time, happy writing!

Until next time, happy writing!

Mark
*I made a bad grammar joke! Am I not funny?
PS. That novel I wrote with Mark Desvaux is still getting lovely reviews. Grab your copy here and tell us what you think.
PS. Oh, and if you want to support our work on the podcast, we now have a Patreon. Do please support us and we can keep this crazy train rolling.

Cosmic Cosmo Podcast

This week’s podcast is a bit different in that we were visited by Catriona Innes, Senior Editor at Cosmopolitan UK. When I was a teen, Cosmo was the mag that you read to learn about sex when you were sure no girls were looking! But it’s evolved into something very different now and it was terrific to hear from Catriona how she’s gone undercover to expose all sorts of shady shenanigans. Cosmo is now doing what 21st century magazines do best with long form articles, thoroughly researched with a sense of perspective and objectivity.

There were also some top tips from Catriona on interview techniques that any writer could use in their work. Check it out here.

We also released another deep dive episode for our Patreon subscribers. It’s all about how to tackle second drafts, and you can listen to a wee snippet here. If you want more, do please pledge your support over on our Patreon page.

 

And speaking of pledging… have you signed-up to join me on the epic adventure that is The End of Magic yet?

Joanna Penn on the Bestseller Experiment

On this week’s podcast we spoke to Joanna Penn, and blimey O’Reilly it’s an episode crammed with a ton of useful information on marketing and social media for authors. I’ve listened to it three times already to transcribe it for the Vault of Gold and it still hasn’t all sunk in.

One small note; we were using Zencastr to record this episode, which is normally as good as gold, but for some reason I sound like a Dalek gargling Listerine for most of it, and then at the very end I sound like I’m trapped in a tin box. Apologies for that. Normal service will be resumed shortly… CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW