Don’t Count On Making Big Bucks
If you choose the commercial publisher option, the best you can hope to receive for your book is a royalty somewhere between 6% and 10% of the “net”. The “net” is the amount the publisher receives AFTER discounting to retailers.

Example; cover price = $30; discount to large retail chain = $15 (i.e. 50%). Your cut would be somewhere between $0.90 and $1.50 per sale. So, for selling 3,000 copies (a very good sales figure) you would receive a grand total of somewhere between $2,700 and $4,500!

You’ll Have To Write Lots Of Books
If you choose the self-publishing option your main distributor will pay you somewhere around 45% of the cover price of your book. Using our $30 cover price example; that works out to $13.50 per sale that goes to you under this scenario. Then you have to deduct your costs which include: printing the book, overheads, and marketing, publicity and advertising expenses.

Example: cover price = $30; distributor payment to you at 45% of cover = $13.50, before expenses. Deduct: printing costs - $3.50; overheads - $1.00; marketing, advertising, publicity - $1.00 = ($13.50-$5.50) = $8.00 per book sale. So, for selling 3,000 copies you would make only $24,000.

And don’t forget, this option involves your ongoing direct personal time and effort involvement.

Wait Forever To Get Paid
Typically, you will have to wait between 90 days and 120 days after an actual book sale before you will receive your payment for that sale. I still shake my head at this one. How does the publishing industry get away with such an archaic practice in the 21st Century?

In normal business the standard wait for payment is usually 30 days, sometimes as much as 60 days; but 90 to 120 days to pay a poor struggling author? It’s a crying shame that they still manage to get away with it. This kind of payment delay is the norm, whether you go through a commercial publisher or if you’re a self-publisher.

Issue 100% Refunds On Unsold Books
A trademark feature of the conventional book publishing industry is the way in which it deals with “returns”. In almost all cases -- publishers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers – they maintain the right to return unsold books to you, the author, for a 100% refund, even many months later!

Example: Say you sell 200 copies of your book to a particular retail chain through your publisher (commercial publisher model) or through your distributor (self-publisher model). Then, let’s say that after five months, various stores in that retail chain find that 45 unsold copies of your book are still on their shelves. The retailer would simply send those books back to your publisher or distributor for a 100% refund. That company would would then routinely pay that retail chain a 100% refund for each book returned and in-turn would deduct that total amount from your account!

I’m not kidding folks, this is how it really works!

Page 2 of 3 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 3 | Next