Reinvesting Author Royalties In The Books That Earned Them

For some of my books, the easiest way to release them and start making money is to make my own book covers. I'm not incredibly skilled in the area of computer graphics, but I can put together a decent cover that will help the books sell. My best-selling book over the past two years sports a cover that I made with a combination of Gimp and Paint.



Recently, I decided to reinvest the author royalties made by my travel photo books back into the books themselves. I wanted the covers to look more professional and more like a unified set. This was around the time I was working on the latest travel photo book, Traveling the U.S.: Utah. So I went from four book covers that look fairly amateurish:

to five book covers that look like a professionally made, unified set:

 

It always bothered me a little bit that I could never get my author name to match the exact same font size and that East Coast History couldn't use white text. The latest round of covers has none of those problems, they all look like part of a set. If you subtract the cost of the new covers, these five have still made me a little bit of money but, realistically, it's like they're all starting over from scratch with better covers and a few good reviews each.

I've swapped the new covers in for the old ones on all of the e-book versions and on all of the paperback versions as well. I had to raise the prices a little on the paperback versions, but the e-book versions are still the same price. I was tempted to order all five in paperback, but I have a rule about not doing that anymore. I've ordered so many of my own paperbacks that sales of my paperbacks haven't quite balanced it out. I need to reach a break-even point.

That being said, I would like to give you a quick run-down on the five travel photo books in my set. It's unlikely I will be able to release another one for at least a year or two because these are all based on my own travels with photos I took and background info that I researched.

Traveling Asia: The Philippines was the first travel photo book I released. I lived in the Philippines for two years as a missionary, speak fluent Tagalog, and returned in 2010 to tour the Philippines once again. This photo-based travel guide includes Tagalog words for some of the things you'll run into as well as some common souvenirs from Baguio (up north in the mountains) and some foods you can try if you're brave enough.

Traveling Asia: Tokyo, Taipei, and Hong Kong features a photo-based tour of the three cities we visited after stopping in the Philippines for our 2010 vacation. I was just a tourist for these three, so my photos come with some research that I did after we left. I had my Canon camera by this point so all of the pictures are high quality (whereas some of the pictures from my Philippines guide were taken with a film camera or a lower megapixel digital camera.)

Traveling the U.S.: Hawaii features pictures from our 2012 vacation in Hawaii. It mostly covers Oahu but also includes a visit to Pearl Harbor and the Polynesian Cultural Center on Laie. The cover features a wolphin (a dolphin / whale hybrid.) There are only a few wolphins alive today.

Traveling the U.S.: East Coast History is, by far, the longest travel photo book I've written so far. It features over 125 photos from the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, Arlington National Cemetery, Mount Vernon, Monticello, Jamestown (with excavation photos), Gettysburg, Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 Memorial, and more. Since it's quite a bit longer than the others, the paperback is more expensive but I've kept the e-book price the same as the other four.

Traveling the U.S.: Utah is my latest travel photo release. It occurred to me that while everyone gets excited to travel and explore new places, a lot of people haven't seen most of the history in their own city or state. I've lived in Utah since I was fifteen (with the exception of two years that I lived in the Philippines) and I had never visited the Capitol or many of the sites around Temple Square. This, like my other books, is not a comprehensive guide and it mostly covers the history in Salt Lake City but it's well researched and has some amazing photos.

All of the above book covers are linked to the e-book version on Amazon. If you haven't checked out any of them, please consider giving one of them a shot. It's a fun, easy way to get acquainted with new cultures and history and they aren't very expensive.

Attack of the Paperbacks

One of the best ways I've recently found to get my writing out there is through multiple formats. On a lot of my e-books, I like to give people the option of an e-book or an audio book. While I mostly just sell at Amazon, I now have free books through other vendors and I'm trying out a $9.99 combo photo travel book at Barnes and Noble. E-books have done well for me so far this year and I've sold over 100 audio books since January. With my new photo based travel books (I make one pretty much every time we go on a cool vacation), I didn't really have the option of doing audio books because 1. they wouldn't make any sense without the pictures and 2. they're very short without the pictures.

 

So I decided a while back to modify my photo-based travel books and give people a paperback option using Createspace (since they distribute through Amazon.) I ordered a proof of each one of the four books in my travel series and they look pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. Here's a couple of pictures of what the front and back covers look like for a few of them:

The photos on the inside turned out better than I was expecting and so all of the paperbacks look great both outside and inside. I'm really happy with the way the proof copies turned out. I've already given a couple of them away but I had to hold on to at least one because they're pretty fun to reread.

So far, I've sold a handful of paperback copies in the U.S. and the U.K. I make almost nothing on them, I really just want to let people have the option of a paperback if they don't have a Kindle, don't want the Kindle app, or just prefer paperbacks. Just as an FYI, I make less than a dollar for each copy that I sell. Three of them are $9.99 and the longest book is $14.99. I had to price them that high because of the amount of pictures in each one. Ink isn't cheap and my $14.99 travel book has over 125 pictures in it plus text plus the amazing front and back cover shots.

If you've ordered one, two, three, or all four of these and I live close to you, I would be happy to sign them the next time I see you if you'd like me to. These four are all 100% Randy Morris originals. I made the front and back covers, I took all the photos in the books, and I researched and wrote out the background history for the pictures. I'm pretty proud of them. I need to give a shout out to my mom though because she pays for us to go on some pretty amazing vacations and she does all of the planning. So Mom, this is one of the only times you'll ever hear me say this... you're awesome. :-P

All four are available on Amazon and that's probably the best way to get them. Keep in mind that Amazon gives you free shipping on orders over $25 and you could easily hit that price point by buying a few of these. Here's the links:

Traveling Asia: The Philippines - http://www.amazon.com/dp/1490444505/
Traveling Asia: Tokyo, Taipei, & Hong Kong - http://www.amazon.com/dp/1490442197/
Traveling the U.S.: Hawaii - http://www.amazon.com/dp/1490430806/
Traveling the U.S.: East Coast History - http://www.amazon.com/dp/1490572686/

If you decide to purchase copies (paperback or ebook), thank you for supporting me as a part-time author. I've dreamed of people buying my books since I was a little kid... I just never imagined I could actually sell hundreds of books a year in several different formats in my twenties. Eventually, I plan on aiming for the thousands. I hope everyone had a great Independence Day (if you're in the U.S.) and have a great Saturday.