3 ms·
It's not exactly 98% of the profits; but, it still seems egregious. From what I've noticed, royalties are generally about 10% of gross against advances (if any
by gruen 15y ago
It's not exactly 98% of the profits; but, it still seems egregious.
From what I've noticed, royalties are generally about 10% of gross against advances (if any), or $1 on a $10 soft-cover. The publisher spends money on the acquisition, editing, printing, and distribution; in brick-and-morter land, this isn't cheap. Remember that the store needs to make a couple of bucks, too.
Additionally, major retailers include a buyback clause—if the book doesn't sell, the retailer can sell up to something like 15% of the initial purchase order back to the publisher. The publisher often forwards your share of that burden into your royalty payment schedule.
Though, ultimately, while authors might get screwed financially in a lot of ways, publishing does, as a consumer, keep a lot of crap out of your purchasing decisions. Publishers (on the whole) do provide a lot of value to you: are you going to buy Gruen's AWESOME guide to Ruby or The Ruby Programming Language from O'Reilly Publishing with its venerable woodcut cover treatment?
If you're trying to get your work out there (which is why people write in the first place) you're probably willing to take the traditional publishing deal.
- jeremymcanally 15y agoThe annoying thing about being charged for returns is that you have no control over how many are ordered. When my book Ruby in Practice went to stores, I felt like there were FAR too many copies going out. Lo and behold, tons of them came back and now I'm eternally on the hook for the cost of those even though I had zero input into how many were actually produced and distributed. Publishers are helpful, but the game is inextricably rigged in their favor, which sucks.
- gruen 15y agoAuthor contracts are the worst. Agents can help, but unless you're at scale, their cost/benefit is a wash. We should compare notes.
- chromatic 15y agoFrom what I've noticed, royalties are generally about 10% of gross against advances (if any), or $1 on a $10 soft-cover. More like $0.50 on a $10 soft-cover--the wholesale discount is likely somewhere between 40 and 55%.
- mgrouchy 15y agoYou are exactly right, hardcover/softcover is generally somewhere between 40 and 60%, I used to work at a receiving area of a bookstore and most commonly the discount was normally in that ballpark.
- vacri 15y agoAnother thing folks don't notice: You write the book once (generally). It's done. Signed off. Time to kick back. The editing is done. But dealing with the storage, distribution, reprinting and so forth goes on for sometimes decades. All you do is sit back and collect royalties - no need to manage storehouse monkeys, provide payment portals for hundreds of little retailers, so on and so forth.