With the news about Bernie Sanders being a millionaire because of his book I was looking at how much an author makes per book sold. The only figure I could find was $1.25 per book. This seems unlikely as there is no way Sanders could sell half the books needed at that rate to become a millionaire. Maybe it is more per book for a non-fiction book?
This is an article from a series of them by Charles Stross that lays out how much he is/was paid in royalties when the article was written.
as you can imagine, it varies widely depending upon the author, the topic, the royalty rates, the publicity, and many other factors. A well-publicized book on the NYT bestseller list can bring in quite a bit. But a book by an unknown author that isn’t well-publicized can bring in practically nothing, even if it’s very good.
I hadn’t heard that Sanders’ million dollar income was because of his book, but it’s believable. His name is extremely well-known and his book comes with a built-in publicity campaign. Besides, his supporters and sympathizers undoubtedly bought the book to get insight into his plans and philosophy, so it’s a “must read” for a lot of people. I can easily believe he could bring in a million dollars from his book.
I’m most of the way through Isaac Asimov’s autobiography. In a lot of the book he’s surprisingly open about his income from writing. The numbers don’t sound like much in 2019 terms, but if you translate it into today’s money it’s a hefty income. Of course, Asimov had about a hundred books out by the time he was fifty, in addition to payment for articles before they were collected (and in addition to his professor’s salary). With a lot of books supplying royalties and a pretty substantial backlist kept in print, he had a pretty good and reliable income.
Your present writer, however, despite having two whole books in print, isn’t going to see a million dollars soon. I’ve got a couple more coming out soon, but the income is only enough to pay my tax fees for the year. Sick Transit is the Glory of the World.
It varies widely depending on the author’s track record, and whether the book is paperback or hardcover or ebook, and the amount of the advance.
Generally, when a well-known political figure writes a book, they get a major advance (it could be a million), half of which they get immediately and half when the book is published. Even if the book sells 0 copies, they keep that money. This only works if you’re famous, however.
Looking at the numbers, one of Bernie’s books has a cover price of $28. Assuming a 12% royalty, that’s $3.36 (the royalty goes up if it hits some sales targets).
There are authors and there are celebrity authors. Let’s not confuse the two.
Stross’s royalty figures are pretty standard for authors.
Royalties are calculated based on the list price of a book (with exceptions that Stross points out). The list price for Sanders’ Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance is $27.99. One can assume he will sell many more than 10,000 copies so use the 15% royalty rate. (Those are minimum percentages. Celebrities may negotiate higher ones.) That’s $4.20 per book. That means he needs to sell 238,000 copies to make a million dollars. That seem doable.
But using just hardcover sales is the tip of the iceberg. His book will be coming out in paperback, audiobook, and Kindle formats. Each brings in a different revenue stream, calculated differently. Other formats are probably happening and so are foreign editions, magazine excerpts, and bulk sales to use as promotional material. Undoubtedly there are other variations I am not elevated enough to know about.
And the release of a new book invariably boosts sales of older books, especially recent older books. This is Sanders’ third book in three years. All, we must presume, are selling nicely.
I see no reason to doubt that Sanders makes a million dollars per book. He says he’s releasing his tax returns. I guess we’ll find out.
Sanders got an advance of, I think, $795,000 for his pre-campaign book. To earn that advance, he had to sell one copy to the publisher. Last year, he got an even bigger advance for his next book. He also got some ongoing royalties from his earlier book because its sales to the public were apparently sufficient to earn royalties above the advance. Sanders was a very popular presidential campaign. Unsurprisingly, a large number of people wanted to read his book.
I read that he sold 203,000 copies of the book that is 5$ a book to get to 1 million. That is 18% of the list price. I don’t think the list price is what people pay. His latest book is marked down to $18 on Amazon. $5 is 28% of $18. Is that a realistic amount of money to make per book?
Meanwhile at the top end of the scale, the Obamas made a joint deal of $65 million for their resp. memoirs. Based on how well Michelle’s book has sold with Barack’s yet to come, Penguin Random House* is going to make money on the deal.
Sanders made $1 million in both 2016 and 2017. His 2018 income will be released sometime after the 15th. The vast majority of that is from book advances and royalties.
Not so fun fact: Before he it big with books, Sanders was considered one of the poorest US Senators. The extra income barely moves him up the ladder. He is not at all “rich” compared to his colleagues.
As I said, celebrities get to cut better deals than mere mortals. I don’t think an 18% royalty is unusual in his case.
Royalties are generally calculated on list price because publishers have no ways of knowing what price booksellers will put on a book. Nor does it matter to them. Like every other producer of goods they make their money on selling the book at wholesale, knowing that the store will mark the good up for the consumer. It’s doesn’t matter to them whether the mark-up is 10% or 200%.
The standard wholesale discount for books is 50%. Amazon is known for negotiating a better discount, often 55%, because they buy in such volume. The author shouldn’t have to pay for the publisher’s business decisions. The publisher has already made the determination of what they need to make a profit, and the author’s advance - and royalties that exceed the advance, if any - are factored in from the beginning. The prices you as a consumer pay play no part in these decisions, any more than the price you pay for jeans at Walmart matters to Levis when they sell Walmart their product.
Nitpickers will note that all sorts of exceptions can creep into these standard statements. Royalties will vary depending on all sorts of specifics. (Book club sales and bulk purchases at discount, just for two examples.) Generally speaking, these don’t make much difference for a book at this level, and I’m ignoring them utterly.
I get 14% for my travel guidebook. Works out at just over £1 a book. It probably sells a couple of thousand copies a year, so I’m not planning retirement yet.
The royalty rate on a field guide I wrote is a total of 10%, but I split it with the artist who did the illustrations. List price is $35, so I make $1.75/copy. That’s with the original publishers in Costa Rica. They’ve licensed it to another publisher in the US, and I only make about $1.10 for books sold in the US.
I only end up making about $1200 a year on royalties. However, I make a much bigger profit per book distributing them in Panama (that is, selling them wholesale and on consignment, depending on the customer). In all, it brings a bit of money but I’m not retiring on it.
With a book that was a better seller in the US market, or a better royalty rate (especially if I didn’t have to split it), there would be a lot more income even for a niche book.
Based on your numbers it looks like Sanders gets $5 a book, publisher gets $7.60 a book, and amazon gets $5.40. I had no idea authors did so well.
Does Sanders get all of “his share,” or does some of it go to a ghost (co-)writer, research assistant, editor, etc.?
It would depend on the contract, but as far as I know it would be highly unusual for such people to share in the royalties. They would have been paid a fee up-front for their work, and would get the same regardless of the amount of sales.
On other books I’ve written, I was paid an up-front fee to write them, and receive no royalties. All profits go to the organization that paid me to write them.
had you considered paying the illlustrator’s fees up front … so as to not share royalties at point of sale? if so … what was your deciding factor? also, how many illustrations did the book contain? i would agree, the book being a field-guide … it should contain a fair number of illustrations.
perhaps that was the deciding factor for you … the number of illustrations for a book which might not sell very many copies … you had already anticipated the terms would be much more practical with keeping the artist on the royalties payroll. only other recourse i (personally) would consider is taking a few art-classes and doing the illustrations myself.
let’s face it, though … writers are not always ‘paint-brush’ literate … and vice-versa.
If wasn’t my decision, it was that of the publisher. The illustrator had previously done the illustrations for a field guide to birds of Costa Rica with a different author. Although we re-used a bunch of the illustrations, he got the same deal as for the other book, but with me as the author.
Another field guide published by the same publisher has four authors, two of whom also did illustrations, and another illustrator who didn’t do any writing. Some of the collaborators share in the royalties, some were paid up front. I am planning to work with them on other projects that are similarly complex.
The book illustrates over 900 species and has well over 1000 illustrations. Basically half the book is illustrations. For a book with fewer illustrations it would be more practical to just pay the illustrator
Actually, one of the major factors was that the illustrator had already produced more than half the necessary paintings. I have also worked as a professional biological illustrator, although most of my work has been on plants. (In fact, many years ago I illustrated a field guide to common trees of Panama. I split the proceeds, which was a lump sum, with the author and project manager.) I’m capable of doing birds but would need a lot more practice to get up to the level of the illustrator. (I’ve also done illustrations of amphibians, reptiles, and extinct mammals.) Besides that, if I had done the illustrations as well the project would have taken 10 years instead of three. It’s possible I may do some spot-illustrations on other projects.
In short, although there may be some rules-of-thumb about royalties, each deal is different, especially ones that may include components besides the text (illustrations, photographs).
Most don’t. Sanders gets a better deal and better sales because he’s already famous. Selling even 1000 books would be a big deal for some, much less 200k copies. And most will never get 18% of the list price for any book they ever write.
My mother is a bestselling author in her field. She told me she makes about $1 per copy but that isn’t why she does it. She does it to promote her speaking career which is very lucrative.
You can’t be very far into Asimov’s biography, because somewhere around the point where his writing starts earning as much as his professor’s salary, he says “at this point I won’t mention my income any more”. As an SF author with a decent back catalog, he made this statement around 1960 where he says that each year he expected his earnings to be an anomaly that year, and each year it was quite a bit higher than the year before… back when professors barely made 5 figures…
At the other end, a bookseller once mentioned to me that the store typically pays wholesale 2/3 of the cover price of paperbacks. One of the complaints here in Canada years ago was that US publishers would dump their excess copies at a markdown to bigger retailers and the small stores paid more wholeale than the big stores charged retail. Of course, there really aren’t many small stores left today.
Even way back when - Margaret Trudeau left her husband Pierre when he was Prime Minister in the mid-70’s and went off on a field trip with the Rolling Stones, and wrote a biography/memoir that was supposed to keep her in decent money. The book publisher went bankrupt owing her a huge amount of money, so the story goes that she came back to Ottawa and told Pierre she needed money. “Well,” he says reaching into his pocket. “I think I have $20 here…” So she lost it and attacked him and he punched her and gave her a black eye. It was all the talk of Ottawa at the time. you can’t make this stuff up.
I occasionally buy books at Dollar Tree (“Everything’s a Dollar!”)*. Every time I do, I wonder what the author gets – is it 10-15% of the dollar I paid, or of the list price? I can’t imagine it’s the latter, or money would be lost on every book sold.
- The selection is extremely limited, but the price is certainly right. I’ll buy a book I’m only mildly interested in, since if I don’t like I just donate it and I’m out only a buck. I gave a few boxes of books to a local chapter of the American Association Of University Women, who fund scholarships with the proceeds of their used book sales. I mentioned to the woman who took my books about my habit of buying at the Dollar Tree, and she started to laugh. My Dollar Tree books are almost entirely hardcover, and the AAUW charges $2 per hardcover book.