What if you had to live entirely off your royalties?

[M T McGuire]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

I'm actually starting to find that the books are only the foundation on which your income is made. Believe it or not, I've been doing some research into merchandising my books (ie, posters, bookmarks, dolls, etc) and so far from what I've seen of the results from other authors doing the same thing, depending on how memorable the book/characters/story is, or how popular, cute, cuddly, etc they are, pure merchandise can make up 50% or more of your income.

Now this is bang on, think Alec Guinness. Took a royalty for playing Ben Kenobie, made a fortune in profits from action figure sales and the like. I met one author (friend of a friend) who substantiated it, too. No action figures on his part but he makes the income doing after dinner speeches, schools workshops and the like. I certainly intend to go that route.

Cheers

MTM

[Steven Lake]

Yeah, merchandising your books might feel like you're selling out, but in an odd way you're actually honoring your fans by giving them more than just the book to keep, or the story to remember. You're giving them a physical, tangible piece of your world to hold onto. I mean, if movie posters will sell for anywhere from $20 upwards to several thousand, then you know there is a market for them out there. A little 50c piece of paper that's hung on the wall and sold for a couple of bucks is an easy money maker and fans will love you for it!

Oddly, it might even increase your sales by having the merchandising items act as free advertising for you. Imagine how many new fans are made simply by someone putting a poster of something up on a wall that someone else sees and likes.

[M T McGuire]

Selling out! No way! When I was a kid I was horrified to discover, aged about 14 that there'd been StarWars figures and I'd never even known! As a 10 year old, I'd have killed for them. ;-) Sorry, I keep doing the StarWars thing here don't I?

To that end, the merchandise one, I mean, I have a whole load of post cards on Zazzle (www.zazzle.co.uk/drawnbyhand*) featuring some of the stuff from my book (all like my avatar) and I've done three character sketches, I've more of those in the pipeline. The characters are just faces, though, so I haven't put them up there, I reckon they'll only sell when I get to the point where I'm sketching scenes from the book. The art definitely gets a reaction though so it's worth doing.

Yeh, it's interesting... stacks of potential.

Cheers

MTM

[dworth]

"What if you had to live entirely off your royalties?"

I'd have resorted to cannibalism, again.