Book Price?

Question

Anyone know how much money an author would get if they sold an average selling fantasy/adventure book through a publisher in today's time? And instead of just selling the publisher your book for a certain price, can you take a certain percent of the sales? Thank you!

Answer 1

The formula is figured this way. When you sell your book to a publisher, they figure the cover price as the cost of printing and producing the book x 6. Let's say that comes to 24.99 - an average price for a hardcover book. The average print run for a first time author is 15,000 books. Your royalties are 10%. If you are dealing with a major publisher through an agent, you can get a 50% advance on your royaltes. That would equal about $18,750 less 15% which goes to your agent.

Now comes the hard part. Once you have sold 7501 books, you start collecting royalties on the balance of the books you sell. Many first time authors have to plow their advance into a marketing firm to help them sell books otherwise they won't reach that 7501 mark. If you do not sell the rest of the books, they end up on the bargain shelves and you make ZERO royalties. So it is to your advantage to use your advance to pay a company to promote your book for you so you sell out the first print run and maybe get a second run printed.

If you are with a small publishing company, you get just royalties. They usually don't have money to pay advances. I have known some authors whose total sales with small companies was THREE books. Small publishers don't have much money to promote you or get you in bookstores.

If you are self publishing, you are totally on your own. You pay for the books, you do all your own marketing and you make whatever you can. Most self published books sell less than 100 copies - which means the author actually loses money.

Very few authors get rich on a first novel. Pax- C