Author! Author!

If you are reading on a smartphone, use landscape / hold phone sideways. 

In short, "author" can be a person who writes books or articles, usually for money. It can also refer to the person responsible for something, like the author of a plan. Author comes from the Latin word auctorem, meaning "founder, master, leader." Bow to the author!

When can you call yourself an author?

Well, an author is someone whose written work has been published. In addition to producing published work, people who write are considered authors when they originate the ideas and content of their written work. For this reason, most authors are writers, but not all writers are considered to be authors. 

What do you call a person who likes to write? A writer.

Ah, but an author is a person who is the originator of a written work like an article, a book. A writer is a person who writes a piece of literature, articles, blogs, novels or short stories not necessarily on their ideas. A person becomes an author once their works get published. 

AND SO: if some publisher took all the Sunday Blogs that I have written since 2010 and combined them, cleaned them up, and PUBLISHED them, Thomas A. Capone would become - wait for it - a published author. Today, I'm just a writer. Maybe I should edit out the word..."just". 

There seems to be something magical that happens when a writer becomes a published author. The phrase "wrote the book on" means the writer (now published author) is well known for being extremely experienced in or knowledgeable about something - to be a renowned expert or to know nearly everything about something. The phrase has become so cliched that it is often used after the word "literally" to describe someone who has actually written a book about a certain topic. 

Hey Google: how many books have been published in 2021?

As a result of print-on-demand technology, the number of book titles has increased from 2.3 million book titles published in 2012 to approximately 4 million new books published in 2021, with nearly half of those titles coming from self-published authors. 

The average book in America sells about 500 copies. Only 10 books sold more than a million copies last year, and fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000. There are all kinds of statistics bouncing around out there, but generally speaking, most self-published authors will likely sell around 250 books or less. A typical book author barely makes minimum wage. If one receives an advance and royalties on the net profit from a book - the math can be: Book sells for $25 per copy, you would need to sell at least 4,000 copies to break even on a $5,000 advance. 

Damn, Tom. This is a depressing blog today.

But wait! There's more!!!!!!

For the past several years, I have been doing video podcast interviews of Actors, Authors, Athletes, Celebrities, Entrepreneurs, etc. Ah so: Authors. And, because our video podcasts (NYDLAcast.com) reach millions of people - if 1% of our community buy the book(s) of an author that we interview, well now, that is 10,000+ new book sales. Cut that number in half - cut that projection number in half again - it would still be quite an amazing virtual book signing event, yes? Our www.ZoomTalks.us became www.TomTalks.us and our audio-only podcasts became "a show" that now reaches millions of eyeballs each month. Cool. 

It turns out: Leaders Are Readers. And Audible books (especially when read by the author) are like virtual Master Classes on ( fill in topic). If one is a Professor at an Ivy League School of Business, and they "wrote the book on" (fill in topic) there is a very good chance that their status as a published author is going to sell books. Maybe, their new book will even become a New York Times or an Amazon best seller. 

There are some folks with millions of followers on their social media accounts. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram - these millions of followers can dramatically drive book sales. When I interview published authors, they tell everyone they know about their online interview: "Hey everyone - click here to watch and listen to my Coffee in the Clouds interview about my new book!"

[works for me.....and this works for ALL published authors, not just the famous....]

OK, Tom....... land the plane...............

On July 16, 1995, Amazon officially opens for business as a online bookseller. Within a month, the fledgling retailer had shipped books to all 50 U.S. states and to 45 countries. 

If it were not for writers - if it were not for published authors - there would be no Amazon today. Full stop. There would be no Amazon Prime, no Amazon Web Services (AWS) and, no Jeff Bezos $500M+ yacht. And there would definitely be no Jeff Bezos Blue Origin space company. 

Author! Author! 

The first sale (ever) on Amazon: THIS book.