Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by gommm » Thu, Nov 19, 2009, 2:13 PM UTC

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.

When publisher's give advance that high it's because they know that the book will sale. So I don't think they are really taking that much of a risk with publishing this book.

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

#32

Post by teamonkey » Thu, Nov 19, 2009, 2:39 PM UTC

I find this very interesting, but the way she explains it isn't clearly laid out. Annoyingly, she keeps referring to her own income in terms of net profit but anything else is gross.

Anyway, a link to her first post: http://www.genreality.net/the-reality-of-a-times-bestseller

She got an advance of $50000 of which 1/3 was paid only when the book hit the shelves. Expenses (including agent fees) approximate $9000. If she took a year to write the book, her book would have earned her $35k (gross, $26k after expenses) in July 2007, plus $13000 (gross) in July 2008. And that's it - until she covers the advance, that's her income for this book to date. Hardly stellar. You'd need returns from other books to support yourself in order to make a living from this.

She took back $40k against her advance in the first 4 months followed by a buffered -$2k loss in the next 6 months. That's one hell of a short tail.

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

#33

Post by electromagnetic » Thu, Nov 19, 2009, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

I'm a writer (not a novelist, yet) and from what I've learned from the people I've talked to is simple. #1 is that they write out of a passion (myself included) and that they'll do it regardless of money, so the complaints about the grossly low pay becomes somewhat dubious when many writers still work day jobs for the majority of their career. One of my extended family was a semi-pro golfer, he had notorious low pay from it (even professionals doing the full circuit don't get amazing pay, it's the endorsements that pay well), but he works in banking so his day job pays a lot so he gets to do what he loves (golf) a lot.

#2 is that the genre you choose can seriously affect how much you get paid. Vampire-Romance is 99% of the time YA, which is predominantly read by young-female readers, many of whom may be transients in the market. This might be your ideal literary area, however this isn't a mountain of gold waiting for people with pickaxes to come claim it, this is a stream with a dozen people with sifters already there.

I'm working on a Fantasy series, which if I'm lucky on a NYT best seller list might pull me in above $25,000 due to its target market being well established and adult readers (IE people who'll buy hardback). However, I'm a realist and I quickly realised that Mystery novels have the biggest literary market and pay their authors the most of any. Writing a pulp mystery novel could likely bring in $25,000 for a single book (likely very few royalties, but that's beside the point here), hitting a best seller list for mystery (especially a multi-book deal) would easily bring in the big cash and could work as your day job.

The authors own efforts also contribute, many authors believe that their only job is putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard), which is well within their rights. However many authors do vast marketing and meet-and-greets, signings and such to help boost word of mouth of themselves, not their books. A good example here is John Scalzi, who is constantly in contact with his fans and does extensive convention runs. This kind of self-marketing is how many webcomics became profitable and allowed their artists to become full time at it relying solely on advertisements.

Edit: Note on the genre front. Many NYT Best Sellers hit the front page on Hard Cover (where the author makes a greater percentage of royalties, but also the book sells for 2/3 times the paperback price), especially mystery novels. However YA never hits the list in hard cover, many are rarely ever released in hard cover. Not selling hard cover books well will easily 1/2 or 1/3 your pay and typically the older reader spends more on their books and will buy hard cover.

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

#34

Post by netcan » Fri, Nov 20, 2009, 12:06 AM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #30

netcan wrote: post #25

From the comments: Thanks for sharing this. As a writer, I still don’t understand why we receive such a small pay check when the publisher reaps big profits. Yes, they take the chance, put up the money, and promote the book, but they would have nothing to sell if we didn’t write the book. Because of that, I’m self publishing my next book. I figure that I only need to sell 10% of what I would through a publisher to ma…

Publishers are not just marketing machines, they also have editors. One of the dangers of self-publishing is not getting robust feedback from a good editor.

I disagree. Editors is the type of service that is defined enough in scope to outsource effectively. It is one of the expenses of self-publishing, sure. It shouldn't be skipped. But just like they can pay to have a book printed, you can pay to have it edited.

I don't think that there is really an argument that all the stuff that publishers do is unnecessary. Only that authors might be able to do it themselves. The point that seems to be brought up every time (I've never worked in publishing, so I don't know) is that their ability to promote a book is not replaceable. The reason that comment caught my attention is that it offers a solution to that problem: You don't need to match them, just get within an order of magnitude.

I suspect that one of the hard to replicate aspects is the filtration that publishers offer. They reject books with low chances of success. If they are better then average at selecting, that should increase average ROI. This is where the decade comes in to play. Printing smaller runs is getting cheaper all the time. Distribution is getting easier. ebooks may make getting a book out the door very cheap. If you don't have high up front costs, you don't need filters.