Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
Regarding books published through a publisher, the common procedure is for the author to be paid an "advance" or a flat amount toward the potential royalties a book might earn. I've heard the amount for fiction is US$3000-5000 per book. If the amount of royalties generated by book sales ever exceeds the amount of the advance, the author gets more payments, but this isn't especially common. However, book sales drive future contracts, so by buying an author's books we can at least make it more likely that the author will be contracted for another book.
For my non-fiction book, I was paid an advance of $500, and I doubt I'll ever see another payment.
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My experience with publishers is somewhat out of date, but in 1993 I was paid $3500 for a book that made it onto the nonfiction/computer bestseller list. Still never saw an extra cent from it, but then I didn't expect to.
Software writing was far more lucrative: a program I wrote further back put me through university with plenty left over. But that was back in the late 80's, when there were still a number of populat platforms and the market was therefore fragmented. So you didn't have to have a team to create a competitive product, and a single programmer could still make a big splash with "kitchen table software". Publishers would depend on a few titles and that may have effected rate of royalties as well (it worked out to about 20%). But this rate may have been high because everyone involved knew in advance that it would be a bestseller.