4 ms·

huh, the publisher i work for pays 25 perecent of net receipts on ebook sales. and we’re an academic nonprofit org.

InsideOutSanta 2y ago
TBH, I haven't looked into exact numbers in a while, but the way I recall it is that for a Kindle book, you get 35% royalties. So in your case, if a book sold for $30, you'd get $2.6 for that book, which is already not great. If you factor in publisher expenses, taxes, maybe advances, etc., you may end up with a very low amount, depending on how exactly your publisher calculates these. Tech books tend to not sell very high numbers (a book on a niche programming language is considered quite successful if it sells 10k copies), so it's important to make a good amount of money on each individual sale. So for me personally, Kindle sales in particular are essentially worthless. Let's say I end up making 2 bucks on a Kindle sale (which is more than I make on average). If I sold 10k Kindle books, that would be 20k income for me, which is simply nowhere near enough to justify the effort of writing a book.
- Finnucane 2y ago
  well, if you haven’t earned out your advance, and you encourage people to pirate, you’ll never earn out your advance. i don’t recall exactly offhand, but our net on an Amazon ebook sale is about 70% of list.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    I'll never earn out my advance on Amazon sales, period. The 70% royalty is only available to books below $10, and also incurs other costs from Amazon. Which makes the calculation even worse, because now you're forced to sell at a lower cost, and you pay additional flat fees to Amazon for each sale. In your case, if you sell the book for $10, you get about $6 ($7 minus fees), of which you get 25%, so you also only end up with about $1.50 per sale.
    - Finnucane 2y ago
      i think you need to find a better publisher.
      - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
        It doesn't matter who the publisher is. I've shown the calculations for Amazon's take. I've pointed out how many copies reasonably successful tech books sell. The numbers don't work.

TBH, I haven't looked into exact numbers in a while, but the way I recall it is that for a Kindle book, you get 35% royalties. So in your case, if a book sold for $30, you'd get $2.6 for that book, which is already not great. If you factor in publisher expenses, taxes, maybe advances, etc., you may end up with a very low amount, depending on how exactly your publisher calculates these. Tech books tend to not sell very high numbers (a book on a niche programming language is considered quite successful if it sells 10k copies), so it's important to make a good amount of money on each individual sale. So for me personally, Kindle sales in particular are essentially worthless. Let's say I end up making 2 bucks on a Kindle sale (which is more than I make on average). If I sold 10k Kindle books, that would be 20k income for me, which is simply nowhere near enough to justify the effort of writing a book.

Finnucane 2y ago
well, if you haven’t earned out your advance, and you encourage people to pirate, you’ll never earn out your advance. i don’t recall exactly offhand, but our net on an Amazon ebook sale is about 70% of list.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  I'll never earn out my advance on Amazon sales, period. The 70% royalty is only available to books below $10, and also incurs other costs from Amazon. Which makes the calculation even worse, because now you're forced to sell at a lower cost, and you pay additional flat fees to Amazon for each sale. In your case, if you sell the book for $10, you get about $6 ($7 minus fees), of which you get 25%, so you also only end up with about $1.50 per sale.
  - Finnucane 2y ago
    i think you need to find a better publisher.
    - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
      It doesn't matter who the publisher is. I've shown the calculations for Amazon's take. I've pointed out how many copies reasonably successful tech books sell. The numbers don't work.