Money

[newmyname]

I've just looked into one of my favourite books and it sold 15000 copies. At about 10 percent commission the author would have made about £6000. Does this seem right ? Is it really that unprofitable ? It's a good book

It's just, a lot of pressure, that the story has to be amazing to be worth the effort

It is shocking how little authors get paid. Yes you generally need a day job. I know a few authors. Best career advice to someone who wants to be a writer - be pretty much anything else that you can bear to be. If you are still writing in every second of spare time then you are a writer. You may never make money from it, but if you want to do it anyway then you are a writer.

And yet I lose count of the number of times I see tweets and other social media sharing "I really love this author's books - you can download it for free on (pirate site)" - so then the author gets nothing at all. If you like a book then please please pay for it.

If it were that simple that would actually be better.

To be clear there a lot of amazing stories which don’t get traditionally published at all let alone get huge book deals or become bestsellers. Many modern classics didn’t get large advances.

There are a lot of books that aren’t necessarily uniquely “amazing” which end up being bestsellers because of celebrity association and/ or the publisher has paid such a big advance that they push and push this book through aggressive marketing in order to earn it back. 50 shades of grey done exceedingly well and it wasn’t an amazing story to say the least, but it did do amazingly in the sales charts for various reasons.

Amazing story does not always equal commercial success nor is commercial success proof of an amazing story.

Regarding it being “worth the effort” - I think most writers/artists find intrinsic value in creating a piece of work they’re proud of, even if it doesn’t earn them a huge amount.

However, if you look at it solely in terms of financial reward yes majority aren’t getting paid well for the time they’ve spent on writing the book.

And then you get someone like Amy Schumer who was offered an advance by Simon & Schuster that was millions higher than the sales projection - bonkers!

Completely agree @OpizpuHeuvHiyo and I can’t stand the debates online about if book piracy is OK.

I decided to have a quick look into how the publishing industry is doing as a pp has mentioned it upthread. So considering how advances for the majority have been reduced and POC writers faring particularly badly in terms of how much they’re being paid (which then affects how much marketing spend they get) , according to a recent Society of Authors report, it’s astonishing to see how well then publishing industry is actually doing:

“Valued at $89.25 billion in 2022, the global publishing market is booming – predicted to grow six per cent year on year for the next five years.”

https://online.hull.ac.uk/blog/top-trends-transforming-the-future-of-publishing?hsamp=true

“The Publishers Association has today released its new ‘A Year in Publishing’ summary statistics. These once again show growth for the sector, with total sales for the UK’s publishing industry reaching £6.9 billion- up 4% from 2021. 669 million physical books were also sold last year. This is the highest overall level ever recorded.”

https://www.publishers.org.uk/publishing-industry-shows-resilience-with-record-breaking-growth/

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/17/uk-publishing-industry-reports-record-breaking-year-in-2022

Yes please buy the book! An author works for a year to produce a book and then sees it sold for 99p and they will get about 11p from that. For a year's work. If you want to read it for free then take it out of the library then the author gets a PLR payment which is higher than the 11p they'd get from a 99p purchase!

<gets off soapbox> <remembers I can't afford a soapbox>

They take 90% of the risk.

And some of us are writing three books a year on contract and still not making enough money to give up the day job. AND I don't have a mortgage to pay.

And people still want to buy all their books for 99p. I think a lot of the problem is that writing is so ubiquitous. EVERYONE thinks they can write a book (they just don't have the time - ha!) so they don't value those that do it.

I made around £6k this year but that includes an audio deal and a deal abroad. My royalties after I earned-out my advance were only £700.