[Finnucane]

He doesn't seem to understand what a royalty is. He quotes himself saying "To compensate for their 85% share of the royalties, a publisher needs to sell at least 5x more copies for you to break even [compared to self-publishing]." As the lady on the tv says, that's not how any of this works. In trade publishing at least, the author's royalty is a percentage of the cover price of the book. In normal retail selling, the publisher gets maybe 50-55% of the cover price in revenue, out of which they have to pay you and also all of their costs of producing your book.

[101008]

As a publisher author of a non-fiction book with an established publisher, I had to stop reading after that first point because he is completely wrong.

[Multiplayer]

I think it makes sense. He's saying that if you get a 15% royalty, vs the 100% royalty minus costs of self publishing, you need to sell 5x more books via the publisher.

It's oddly worded, but the math roughly works depending on your self publishing costs.

[TheOtherHobbes]

It's very poorly worded. And if not wrong, then certainly very unclear.

The math... depends.

Not all publishers offer advances, and those that do offer advances with different strategies.

Here is one strategy: a commissioning editor uses a sales modelling system to estimate the maximum possible advance against likely sales.

At larger publishers, you can be sure the editor has a very good idea what the likely sales will be. Because that's what publishers do, and they have years, sometimes decades of data and experience to draw on.

The editor will set the advance so the book never earns out.

This gives you more money than you might expect for an advance. And you can usually haggle upwards from the initial offer.

But of course you've just signed what is really a work for hire contract. You will not see any more money than the initial offer.

Would you earn more self-pub? Possibly. That depends entirely on your ability to reach an audience and sell your book to them. Parking a title on Amazon isn't nearly enough.

If you have good marketing skills and if you hit a desirable niche you can do very well - much better than trad pub.

But if you miss - you've wasted maybe a few months, with not much to show for it.

So it's a risk/reward calculation. If you know you can write the book, an advance is money in the bank. It's a known quantity. You don't have to do marketing too.

Sometimes that's a workable deal, especially if you have a day job and marketing is not a strong competence. You won't early nearly as much as you would in dev, but - it's a book. With your name on it. And some cash.

If you have the time to spare and either know or hope you can build an audience, and are sure the title really does fit a niche, by all means self-pub.

But you should only do this if you've done the groundwork. Like any other business you have to think about product/market fit, and marketing, and finding your audience, and all of the usual hurdles.

And unfortunately, marketing is a skillset in its own right. Of course you can learn it, but starting cold is challenging.

Personally having been through this cycle a few times I wouldn't trad pub now. But I also wouldn't assume that all I have to do is write a book and it will automatically sell in reassuring quantities.

I know it won't. There's more work to do, and I wouldn't want anyone to underestimate how hard it is.

[Finnucane]

>The editor will set the advance so the book never earns out.

Not deliberately, most of the time. If you have a track record, a good agent, and there's a competitive bid for your book, they might overpay knowing that they don't have to earn out to make a profit, they just have to get reasonably close. Maybe they can make it up in subrights. But if those things are not true, the advance will be lower.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Not for fiction. For non-literary (i.e. non-household name, tech-oriented) non-fiction - definitely.

It's a production line, and it's rare for authors to do more than one or two books.

Some bigger publishers really do have spreadsheet models of likely sales, and they base their acceptable advance offers on them.

[chipotle_coyote]

Signing a contract with an advance that turns out to be all you get paid for the book is not at all "really a work for hire contract" -- you could say it turns out to really be a flat fee contract, but that's not the same thing. A "work for hire" contract has to do with who owns the copyright, not the payment structure. If your publisher gives you a $10,000 advance on your book and you don't earn enough royalties to break the $10K mark, the book is still yours. (And there are work for hire contracts that pay royalties rather than flat fees!)

[TheCoelacanth]

Self-publishers only get a 100% royalty if they self-retail as well (very few do this, I think). Otherwise, they only get the ~50% that the publisher would get paid from the sale price.

[Finnucane]

It is not oddly worded. It is wrong.

[jimnotgym]

Yes it is an error, but the underlying point is true.

I also thought that, whilst it was easy to recognize the error, the point was still easy to understand. I think it is a good point, let's hope the author redrafts.