It's quite common for authors not to see any royalties. But they do get money - it's paid up-front, an "advance" against future royalties. It's just that their books don't sell enough copies for the royalties due to exceed the advance.
Any publisher charging an author money to get in print isn't a commercial publisher, but a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers make their money from the authors, not from people buying the books!
Academic publishing is very different from commercial publishing, and works by its own rules. And I suspect traditional academic publishers aren't going to survive for much longer (Charging the universities to get articles into the journals and then charging the universities for the journals? Wow!).
I think the big difference that's yet to happen in ebook publishing is the reduction in the number of middle-men, and a reduction in the cut taken by retailers. (Oh, and the elimination of DRM for ebook sales.)
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Originally Posted by spinoza
I recently read that less than 10% of published authors ever see any royalties or monetary gain from their books. Indeed, it is not uncommon for authors to have to pay significant printing fees for having a publisher accept their work. I know that I, as an academic, have never seen anything in the way of a check for my many publications (admittedly mostly articles).
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