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

> 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.

This looks like another case of those controlling the means of production and distribution primed for disruption. There's no shortage of "iTunes for Books" ideas out there, but imagine giving authors a means to distribute their work without a middleman taking quite so large a cut. Similar to what's happening in the music industry.

It wouldn't have to rely solely on digital distribution either… well-known authors or books that meritoriously rise above the rank and file could then be picked up by the remaining smart book publishers and given real print distribution for those who still like to show off their bookshelves. Sort of like people still buying vinyl even though they have the MP3s.

There are some means, like Lulu.com, for example. Their charges aren't unreasonable, though you won't be making much money if you want to roll out a $7 paperback through them (for bigger, pricier books though, you end up with a good margin).

The problem is the vast majority of authors aren't marketers and aren't that interested in marketing and promoting their own books even if they have some ideas. The relationships publishers have with distributors can prove significant in getting those first few thousand copies out the door. (And it's certainly not as if I'm a massive fan of publishers here.. http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/ )

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 this "if I were to write one" business?

- She expects to see the rest of her advance and some non-negligible amount of money coming in in the future from royalties and other rights, so it's not really fair to say that her "income" from this book is $25,000. As a professional author, she would be earning that $25,000 this year and also earning money from prior sales this year, and then she would be earning more from this book later.

- Finally, here's the Amazon synopsis:

Immortal Darkyn Lord Valentin Jaus and landscape artist Liling Harper are two lost souls. Brought together by fate, bound together by passion, Valentin and Liling find solace in each other's arms. But the ties that bind them are deeper—and more dangerous—than either of them can possibly imagine...

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 don't think it's a big loss to society if people aren't getting rich at this particular trade. When authors who are really advancing the art can't make a good living, then let me know.*

* No, this isn't totally subjective. People will be reading Pynchon 30 years from now, but they won't be reading Lynn Viehl.

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.