poweroflove-ga,
Royalties for authors are all over the place, but as a new author, you
start at the bottom. Fiction authors are actually the highest paid, if
they sell, hardcovers pay appreciably more than softcovers. Royalties
are typically broken out on a scale according to the number of copies
sold, such as:
10% on the first 5000 copies
12.5% on the next 5000 copies
15% over 10,000 copies
The big question is percentage of what. According to the Author's
Guild, these percentages are possible for hardcover works, in my
experience, they are quite high. As a bestselling nonfiction author of
trade paperbacks (computer books), I get 12.5% of NET on the first
10,000, 15% thereafter. NET refers to the publishers net income,
slightly less than half of the cover price. In other words, on a $25
book, I average about $1.50 in royalties per copy. Through writer's
groups, I know many authors who make appreciably less.
Most nonfiction authors work for advances, the money the publisher
pays you to deliver the fished manuscript, with partial payments
coming at contract signing, intermediate stages, and as late as
publication. Foreign royalties, book club sales, special discounts and
rights sales also play a part. See the article "Book contracts,
publisher agreements, and author royalties"
http://www.fonerbooks.com/contract.htm
When it comes to self publishing, I must warn you that the main
challenge isn't in the publishing part, it's in the sales part. You
can get your books into distribution (the distributors like Ingram
Books and Baker&Taylor) who supply bookstores and libraries if you
make the effort, but retail stores will not order your book from these
distributors unless you create the demand through reviews in national
publications (very hard to get) or extensive book readings and
speaking engagements.
That said, there are two choices in self-publishing, ordering and
taking delivery of the bookstore get the per unit cost down, or
print-on-demand (POD). I've self published several books using both
local offset shops and using the national print broker, RJcom
http://www.rjcom.com
RJcom has an online pricing engine that lets you put in the cut size
(book cover measurements), number of pages, quantity, etc, and get the
pricing for various quantities. A 320 page hardcover with a four-color
dust jacket I did through RJcom at quantity 1,000 cost around $6.00
each. At my cover price of $21.95 and the standard industry discount
of 55%, I only make about $4.00 each for books sold through
distribution, BEFORE shipping and handling. Fortunately, that book was
a labor of love. As a soft cover, a 288 page paperback at 5.5" x 8.5"
with a four color cover will run
Quantity - Price/book
100........$5.00
300........$4.50
500........$4.00
1000.......$3.00
5000.......$1.25
10000......$1.00
As you can see, the price with offset printing falls drastically with
the number of copies printed. Since your cover price is a constant,
the more copies you print, the higher your profit will be, IF THE
BOOKS SELL. Even large publishers will often print just a few thousand
copies of a new book, to reduce the risk of returns and the book not
selling.
The final option is Print on Demand, and you'll see some POD
publishers offering very high royalty rates, 30% of the cover and
better. However, in order to achieve these royalty rates, these POD
publishers are selling the books into distribution at a short
discount, as low as 10%, meaning that a book store that wants your
book will have to pay the distributor the cover price just to get the
book, and possibly shipping and handling to boot. Nobody will order
the book for stock on these terms, and many book stores won't even
order it if you walk in and pay cash-in-advance.
Most of these print-on-demand publishers use on of the big fulfillment
houses, of which Ingram Lightning Source is the biggest. There are
many expenses involved in setting up as a POD publisher, such as
buying ISBN numbers, set-up fees, formatting the books properly, but
in the end, you can use the following to estimate the actual cost of
producing your book through POD.
$100 set-up per book plus
$0.90 per copy plus
$0.013per page.
So, 300 page book that sells 1000 copies (excellent sales for POD)
costs the publisher $4.90 each. Since the book is produced by Ingram,
there are no extra shipping costs to get it into distribution. The
cover price is whatever you decide, but for the book to have any
chance to be stocked by stores, the discount rate must be at least
50%. You quickly see why POD books have such high cover prices, for
the publisher and the author to both make money. A POD publisher I've
had several conversations with who pays a 35% royalty is Booklocker at
http://www.booklocker.com
Just keep in mind that they offer a short discount in distribution, so
your book is very unlikely to make it into stores, the best chance for
sales will be over the Internet
I hope this answered your question, and best of luck with your book.
Google Search Terms:
Author Royalties |
Request for Answer Clarification by
poweroflove-ga
on
05 Aug 2002 15:56 PDT
Hi Morris,
Thanks so much for all of the wonderful feedback regarding royalties.
I feel that there is a lot of information in your answer, which will
be extremely helpful for me as I decide upon a publishing method and
negotiate a book contract. However, I still feel as though a big part
of my initial question has remained unanswered. When I asked for "the
net amount of royalties and other monies paid to authors using these
various methods," I was looking more for a range of actual amounts
made by first-time authors (e.g., losing $10,000 at the low end to a
profit of over $1,000,000 at the high end) than for a formula, which
allows me to calculate how much royalties I could make based upon
cover price and book sales. While the information you offered will
most definitely help me to know how many books I need to sell in order
to make "X" amount of dollars, it does not help me understand the
liklihood of selling that many books. Do you understand what I'm
saying? Perhaps, this bit of information will help to make my question
clearer. I am planning to ask certain individuals (who have money but
are NOT publishers) to "invest" in the writing of my book. I'd like
to offer them a percentage of MY royalties in exchange. But, in order
for that offer to mean anything, I have to be able to tell them how
much royalties I can be expected to make overall. That was why I
asked for "statistics as to what percentage of authors fall into the
low end, the mid-range, and the high end money-making categories for
each publishing method." For instance, what percentage of authors
make less than $10,000 in royalties? What percentage make between
$10,000 - $25,000 in royalties? What percentage make between $25,000
- $100,000 in royalties? What percentage make over $100,000 in
royalties? How much do best-selling first-time authors make in
royalties (on average)? etc. Do you see what I'm saying? If not,
feel free to ask for more clarification before responding. Thanks so
much for your assistance.
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Clarification of Answer by
morris-ga
on
05 Aug 2002 19:28 PDT
Well, since you asked, I'll give you the bad news. Last year, using
numbers from Publishers Weekly on the number of books published and
the total value of the American book market, plus an average sales
price I derived from the top 100 books on Amazon, I worked out that
the average new book sold less than 2,000 copies. This means that the
average book is a financial failure for the author. This figure
includes books from large and small presses alike, though not
surprisingly, small presses can reach break-even at much lower numbers
than large publishers. Some books, known as backlist titles, may sell
small numbers of copies over large numbers of years, which accounts
for a good proportion of the income for some publishers (and authors).
Large trade publishers of non-fiction expect to average between 5,000
and 10,000 books sold per title, depending on who you talk to. None of
these numbers are available as publicly published figures, they are
gleaned from relationships with editors, agents and through
participating in professional groups. Much like Hollywood, publishers
really count of bestsellers for their profits.
As to breaking down the monies made by first time authors, I can
assure you that those numbers don't exist. In publishing, as in many
other industries, knowledge is power, and the information kept secret
in hopes of attaining competitive advantages. Publishers don't share
their figures on what books are making money, or how many copies
they've sold, unless they are bestsellers. My educated guess would be
that far less than 1% of new authors make over $100,000 and 90% make
under $10,000. I remember an interview with a non-fiction author (a
newspaper correspondent who wrote on the side) who didn't sell out an
advance until his 13th book, and it turns out that many non-fiction
writers never do. That's why I mentioned that most non-fiction writers
are essentially working for an advance.
When you talk about negative returns, you're talking strictly about
self-publishing. The maximum loss is limited by the amount of money
one puts in, but I'm afraid that very few writer/publishers brag about
their losses in public (I'm a bit of an exception there). The problem
for self-publishers is you can't publish 100 books in hopes of getting
that 1 in 100 bestseller. The playing field is not level, self
publishing is looked down upon by everybody from the Library of
Congress to the distribution level, and the only chance of achieving
appreciable sales is through extremely aggressive marketing.
Essentially, you have to sell the books by hand. If you're preparing a
business plan for potential investors, I would focus on your plans for
giving book readings and signings or whatever other means you choose
for getting in front of people and selling them your book. If you can
stick it out of the road for hundreds of events, eventually, your book
might catch the attention of reviewers or you could score an interview
in the mass media. Although many memoirs are published every year, the
vast majority are memoirs of famous people rather than memoirs that
make people famous.
I hope I'm not simply discouraging you, and I'm sorry I can't point
you to published numbers in these areas,other than my own. The only
way to actually get these numbers would be to survey a large number of
self publishers, but as of yet, nobody has gone to the expense. The
numbers I'm giving you are based on personal experience, professional
relationships, and feedback from articles I've written on these
subjects.
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