We?re preparing to launch a new publishing company, the New Deal
Press, with the business model of paying authors a 50% royalty on net
profits. It would make a nice headline for a press release to be able
to say "First publisher to offer standard 50% royalties to authors,"
but we don?t know if that would really be a legitimate claim. I did a
cursory search on Google and only turned up some e-book publishers.
For the purpose of comparing apples and apples, you can see the
details of what we?re planning to offer on our draft site at:

 http://www.newdealpress.com

A couple of answers we aren?t looking for:

1) Special circumstances for superstar authors. It seems to me I?ve
seen where Stephen King got 50% of net for a particular deal, it may
well be that other superstars have managed the same, but that wouldn?t
fall under the heading of a publisher offering standard 50% royalties.

2) Subsidy presses. If the author has to contribute anything to the
publication cost of the book, the publisher is a subsidy press and
there?s no point of making comparisons there. We?re only interested in
comparisons with publishers who pay the costs to produce and
distribute real paper books, and pay the authors an advance, as
opposed to charging the authors paying a fee:-)

3) Self-publishers and co-ops. Again, if the author has to put up any
money, it?s not a legitimate comparison. I?ve earned 100% royalties
when self-publishing, but I?ve paid all of the production costs and
taken all the risks.

4) Payment in kind. I haven?t heard of this in modern times, but some
old European publishers used to simply split the print run with the
author, than each party would sell their own books. I can?t really
picture that working out for either party these days, and you can?t
really call a pile of books "royalties."

No need to say "sorry" if you do another publisher operating with this
model, we?ll just drop the word "First" before issuing press releases.

The 50% net royalty is offered by some POD publishers, but in most
cases, the author has to ante up a little payment for set-up. Not
much, but a little (from $49 to $995, depending on the POD publisher).
I don't remember which ones have offered it in the past, so I can't
give you names, but I do know I've seen such offers. As you noted, a
number of e-book publishers also offer a 50% net royalty.

Your publishing program, like many other POD publishers, certainly has
potential. The difference between your program and many POD publishers
is that they do break even or make money on the service charges for
set-up, design, and/or marketing that they offer the authors. You are
banking on sales only and risking your time in setting up the books
for POD printing.

I believe PublishAmerica doesn't charge the authors at all, but I
don't know what their royalty is.

I hope this helps a little.

John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books
Webmaster: http://www.bookmarket.com