Scott Meyers: Advice To Prospective Book Authors
For example, a e book that wholesales for $25 in the USA may wholesale for $5 in countries like India. So a e book that lists for $50 sells to the bookstore for about $25, and your royalty relies on that $25. The distinction between the 2 varies from publisher to publisher, book to e-book, and bookstore to bookstore, but as a rule of thumb, determine that the wholesale price of a technical book is about half its urged retail price. At the high finish are books written for niche publishers who don't get a lot of broad bookstore distribution and who rarely publish books that sell zillions of copies (e.g., ACM Press, again when it existed). Before you get too enthusiastic about this, keep in mind that international sales are usually small in comparison with US gross sales, and the wholesale rate in your guide could also be vastly completely different overseas. For such a large sale, your publisher will be keen to provide Microsoft a special worth, and your fee could also be totally different (decrease) for such deeply discounted sales. Your editor could disagree, however she or he may be willing to discuss it if you're prepared to reduce or forego your advance. But there are official reasons for a smaller advance (including no advance), too. Unfortunately, one in every of the reasons that most externally prepared indices are terrible is that the work pays poorly - a couple of hundred dollars for indexing a a number of-hundred-page ebook full of concepts and terms the indexer doesn't understand. I did not do the indexing on my books, but I want I had. Of course, it is usually not potential to know which of two publishers will be able to sell extra of your books, a lot much less by what factor, so you may want to listen carefully to your potential publishers' marketing plans earlier than deciding whom to climb in bed with. I say this first, as a result of many individuals get so caught up in royalty charges, they overlook that they don't imply much if the e book does not promote quite a lot of copies. As for Jesse Liberty's comment that promoting between 20-50K copies "will not be a source of great revenue," that depends on your royalty fee, the wholesale worth of the e-book (both of which I focus on beneath), and your definition of "important." Some authors of books that checklist for, say, $60, get a royalty of $6 or more per ebook. But there's something to be stated for goodwill, too, and i consider that authors who deliver on time make life just a little bit simpler, a bit of more predictable for the gamut of individuals concerned in sales and marketing, and people people are likely to attempt just somewhat bit harder for the authors they like, for the authors who are attempting to help them out. A reliable author promoting 5,000 copies a yr can't expect the eye from commission-primarily based sales reps that an unreliable writer promoting 50,000 copies a year can, but odds are that you're going to be a part of the lots of authors with run-of-the-mill gross sales, so your actual aim is to stand out from those masses. Still, I can't help remarking that, in my view, a royalty rate of beneath 15% appears low, especially if you are not getting an advance (which, as I explain under, is generally the case with me.) By that yardstick, many authors get low rates, and that may counsel that my yardstick is warped. I have a strange attitude about advances: I usually do not get them. I've confidence within the content. To have made the text of the guide available at your web site? Normally, the US market is by far the largest market for an English book. You might also embrace Canada, because this can be a market that's often bigger than U.K. The royalties needs to be defined for this market explicitly. Second, I believe (without any hard supporting knowledge) that there is an inverse relationship between advances and royalties. Similarly, I don't give a lot thought to the multitude of provisions for sharing revenues from foreign translations, from selling the rights to provide my books as stage performs and movies (yep, these provisions are within the contracts), etc. There are other things I care about more than those things, so I depart my editor alone on these matters and save my political capital for different matters. There could also be greater than two tiers. It is probably not true. Incidentally, you may have noticed that the acknowledgements of almost each book thanks the writer's partner, girlfriend/boyfriend, kids, pets, and so forth., for their tolerance of having been uncared for throughout preparation of the manuscript. Also, I've this odd notion that getting an advance is like opening your Christmas presents earlier than Christmas.