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Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

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Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#11

Post by rauljara »

mquander wrote: post #8

I'm not too sympathetic, on account of the following: - Her figure of $24K is per book, and then she says (paraphrased) "well, if I were to write one book like this a year." Most authors producing mass-market paperbacks write somewhat more than one per year. The author in question appears to write several per year (looking at the Amazon listings) which probably gross a fairly similar amount. So, what's the meaning of…

"No offense to struggling vampire romance novel writers, but why is it important that people are able to earn a great living writing books like this?"

I think the point was how difficult it is to make a living writing. Period. This is a book that debuted on the New York Times best seller list and it provided its author a moderate income of well under $100,000. According to the NY Times, there are over 10,000 works of fiction published by major presses every year, a lot of them astonishingly well written and crafted. A lot of authors take well over a year to write a work of fiction. If a best seller writing for a well established series can barely rake in that amount of money, imagine how little the people who are producing original work are making.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/books/the-last-word-how-ma... (sorry the link is old, I couldn't find more recent numbers)

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#12

Post by mquander »

rauljara wrote: post #11
mquander wrote: post #8

I'm not too sympathetic, on account of the following: - Her figure of $24K is per book, and then she says (paraphrased) "well, if I were to write one book like this a year." Most authors producing mass-market paperbacks write somewhat more than one per year. The author in question appears to write several per year (looking at the Amazon listings) which probably gross a fairly similar amount. So, what's the meaning of…

"No offense to struggling vampire romance novel writers, but why is it important that people are able to earn a great living writing books like this?" I think the point was how difficult it is to make a living writing. Period. This is a book that debuted on the New York Times best seller list and it provided its author a moderate income of well under $100,000. According to the NY Times, there are over 10,000 works of…

Well, I agree with that, and I don't doubt that fiction which I would probably say is "better" or more worthwhile might well tend to sell even less.

I think the author is being a bit alarmist about her personal situation. I and other people in many fields do high-quality work for under $100,000 a year, too. But if, as she author suggests, the publishers are making a relative killing on these same books, I'd consider that unfortunate in general. (Although I wouldn't consider it surprising, since most creative industries seem to end up with the same balance of power between distributors and producers.)

Perhaps the Kindle and self-publishing will see it fixed someday.

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#13

Post by joshfinnie »

I am not sure how this is true. Look at past serial writers and they all seem to be making a better living then $25,000 a year. Stephen King, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, Harry Potter lady, they all have done very well for themselves.

Even making only $25000 on one book a year, if you have written 5-10 books the past 5 to 10 years, you have to be making money off those books as well... Especially if her advance is $50,000 a book!

I have to agree that I have no real sympathy for this.

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#14

Post by smallblacksun »

jazzychad wrote: post #2

> After paying taxes, commission to my agent and covering my expenses, my net profit on the book currently stands at $24,517.36 > ...the publisher’s portion of sales on this book has grossed them around $453,839.68. ... If I had to make a guess, I’d say they probably netted around $250K on this one. Wow.

The publisher makes more profit than the author, but they also take more risk. The author is guaranteed $50,000, while the publisher could (theoretically) lose $50,000 plus the cost of printing and distributing if the book doesn't sell well.

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#15

Post by byrneseyeview »

immad wrote: post #10
mquander wrote: post #8

I'm not too sympathetic, on account of the following: - Her figure of $24K is per book, and then she says (paraphrased) "well, if I were to write one book like this a year." Most authors producing mass-market paperbacks write somewhat more than one per year. The author in question appears to write several per year (looking at the Amazon listings) which probably gross a fairly similar amount. So, what's the meaning of…

In my mind, the issue is more to do with other people getting rich off the back of this authors work while the author gets hardly any thing. So the question is not the value of the book to society, but the percentage of the value the author should get versus everyone else in the stack.

Is that true in the sense that it makes you feel bad, or true in the sense that you think a smart publisher could make more money with lower rates? If you're right about how much it costs to profitably distribute a book, you could potentially dominate the publishing industry.

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#16

Post by jhancock »

Alnoor wrote: post #7

Clearly, we need to outsource book publishing to China.

I assume your being snarky. To be a bit more serious though, China has a large ebook publishing economy. An author in China would be thrilled to make $25k off a book. Royalty payment in China are horribly low and accounting of books sold or read is highly "inaccurate".

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#17

Post by [deleted] »

smallblacksun wrote: post #14
jazzychad wrote: post #2

> After paying taxes, commission to my agent and covering my expenses, my net profit on the book currently stands at $24,517.36 > ...the publisher’s portion of sales on this book has grossed them around $453,839.68. ... If I had to make a guess, I’d say they probably netted around $250K on this one. Wow.

The publisher makes more profit than the author, but they also take more risk. The author is guaranteed $50,000, while the publisher could (theoretically) lose $50,000 plus the cost of printing and distributing if the book doesn't sell well.

[deleted]

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#18

Post by ojbyrne »

mquander wrote: post #8

I'm not too sympathetic, on account of the following: - Her figure of $24K is per book, and then she says (paraphrased) "well, if I were to write one book like this a year." Most authors producing mass-market paperbacks write somewhat more than one per year. The author in question appears to write several per year (looking at the Amazon listings) which probably gross a fairly similar amount. So, what's the meaning of…

You're not accounting for the fact that this is a book on the NYT bestseller list. She could write dozen of books over her lifetime and have only one make that list. So I'd quibble with "which probably gross a fairly similar amount."

Criticizing the quality of the book doesn't seem entirely valid, because quality literature may sell far fewer copies. How many copies of his books did Pynchon (for example) sell?

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#19

Post by ardit33 »

immad wrote: post #10
mquander wrote: post #8

I'm not too sympathetic, on account of the following: - Her figure of $24K is per book, and then she says (paraphrased) "well, if I were to write one book like this a year." Most authors producing mass-market paperbacks write somewhat more than one per year. The author in question appears to write several per year (looking at the Amazon listings) which probably gross a fairly similar amount. So, what's the meaning of…

In my mind, the issue is more to do with other people getting rich off the back of this authors work while the author gets hardly any thing. So the question is not the value of the book to society, but the percentage of the value the author should get versus everyone else in the stack.

well, I hope the ebooks will change this. With the costing of printing going away, you don't need a publisher anymore. The only thing you really still need to do is marketing.

Re: Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

#20

Post by dtf »

ardit33 wrote: post #19
immad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind, the issue is more to do with other people getting rich off the back of this authors work while the author gets hardly any thing. So the question is not the value of the book to society, but the percentage of the value the author should get versus everyone else in the stack.

well, I hope the ebooks will change this. With the costing of printing going away, you don't need a publisher anymore. The only thing you really still need to do is marketing.

Of course, the flip-side is that anyone will be able to publish a book and most people will know how to steal them. Neither of which make for great prices. Still, interesting times.
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