Ebooks and the Ebay Parable

“Women in Water”

Most people reading my humble blog probably already know about Amanda Hocking, so the the fact mainstream news media have suddenly latched onto her story is not a surprise. I had relatives start emailing me news articles, “Have you heard of this person?!”  “Yes, yes, and the article got some facts wrong, here let me correct you…”

You can read her reaction to it all (and while you’re there, check out the new cover of Hollowland — it’s gorgeous); about the fear and condesencion at a mystery writer’s convention; and Nathan Bradford’s extremely helpful breakdown of dollar break down of hardbacks vs ebooks and what the real threat to publishing is. Joe Konrath argues ebooks ain’t a bubble, and Harper Collins must agree, or else they want to ride that bubble til it bursts because the finally decided it might be wise to get into the game of digital self-publishing.

I have a comparison of my own to make. A couple of years ago, I tried to launch a myself a modest career as a painter on eBay.

I’ve never had any formal painting training, but I’ve been an artist all my life. I’d never given it serious thought as a career because I didn’t go to art school and I had no idea how to get my work into galleries. Also, I hate modern art, so I assumed I didn’t paint what the formal art industry wanted anyway. Also, I kinda sucked.

Then, thanks to eBay, I’d noticed that artists were able to skip the whole gallery step and sell directly to customers. The range of styles (and skill level) was also huge. That excited me. I did market research and found more than hundred independent artists who earned between $2,000 and $5,000 a month just selling their paintings. There were many more; these were just the ones I tracked over time in an Excell file.

They had a couple things in common:

1) They painted and sold between 10-60 paintings per month; most painted a painting every day and put in on the market within that same month, even in the same week
2) They started the auctions fairly low, but most of an individual artists’ paintings ended up going for about the same price (give or take) as that same artists other works
3) Those who had been doing this more than a year had improved as artists, and seen their paintings average sale price trend upward, sometimes quite dramatically
4) Those who had been doing this for more than a year began to resell the same paintings as prints and giclees, making more of their income passsive instead of active

I came at this from a writing background so I thought of these as “midlist artists” and decided that despite what I had always been told about starving artists, this was a viable career. The question was whether it was viable for me? I invested about $500 dollars in my art business. These were material costs: oil and acrylic paints, canvas, and packing & shipping materials. I also set up an eBay account with a store. Then I began painting every day.