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Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
It should be noted that publishers could easily pay authors more--but it does not have to be royalties against potential sales. There are models out there where the author gets a higher percentage--but not so large an advance or no advance at all. This model is usually seen with small to medium sized publishers.
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Indeed I am sure that publishers could easily pay authors more, but is there a model that will satisfy the majority of authors? Is there a model (through a publisher) that will guaranty a higher return for the majority of authors who do get published? Do they pay big time sellers less and lose these authors, pay everyone the same regardless of sales, just crank up the royalties and hope their stock prices don't take a dive when the dividends do?
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It's nice, but it's not a necessity. A necessity is sales. Authors earn a higher percentage from ebooks, which means many more paperbacks have to sell to keep up with ebooks. For a mass market paperback, authors earn about 35 cents per copy. For an ebook selling at near the same price they are likely earning 20 to 40 percent of the list price.
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35 cents a copy does seem abysmally low if you are including all earnings such as advance which I am sure that you are.
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This holds true for indie as well, only more so. I can earn 60 to 70 percent per ebook while I only earn about 10 percent for a print copy (or far less depending on where it sells because of third party cuts along the way). So, while a paperback costs approximately 10 dollars in my print world, I might earn 1 dollar per copy. An ebook sells for approximately 2.99-- and I earn closer to 2 dollars per copy sold.
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I am not understanding the 3rd party cuts making the percentage smaller? If a book is remaindered say, and sells for $3.00 instead of $30.00 and the author was making a 3% royalty of 90 cents would they then get a 1% royalty of 3 cents or a 2% royalty of 6 cents? Could be, just asking.
Of course $2.00 per copy is better than $1 per copy as long as your likelihood of selling at least 50% as many copies is reasonable?
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It should also be noted that in some genres and at some publishers, ebooks outsell print copy already--and in fact, several ONLY do ebooks now unless the sales are high enough to warrant stretching into the print world. This is also certainly true for most indies.
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While I read many things my genres of choice a mystery and urban fantasy
I have read a few self published in both and urban fantasy has had a couple of okay for me books. Not so far with mystery. I don't read much sci-fi these days although at one time it was 80% of my reading, but I have always thought, and still do, that the sci-fi community of authors was very supportive of new authors, while I do not see the same in mystery circles.
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Just to try to get a bit back on topic:
Amazon pays more per copy in general as do other self pub methods and they will pretty well market anything legal AFAIK.
Hachette et al pick and chose, pay less per copy, but may give a better overall return for a slightly successful author. And for the less than intrepid reader, there is a fairly strong likelihood, that the book will not be an overall disappointment.
Still there are statistics indicating that there is more money to be made selling through Amazon.
I'll know which is true probably when established authors (and I don't mean great authors, or better authors, just those who do well already) start switching en masse to Amazon or self pub.
And I hope for the best outcome for authors, readers, and even publishers.
Helen