How much should an author expect to get paid for an Ebook?

[lin]

And now Ant has deleted all his posts, including the information he DID give.

Sad

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[cussedness]

Ant is full of information. He's coming to fiction from another realm, the RPG community where he is well published.

There is little or no money to be made in the small press.

The majors include ebooks as sub rights in their contracts and sell them for the same price as their print titles.

The real question here is about the Indies. Indie ebooks rarely earn sufficient money to pay an advance on. The royalties are decent, but most ebooks fail to sell more than a handful of copies.

Janrae Frank
I have no skeletons in my closet, they are all hanging from the yardarm.

Once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called the Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa?necari. Isranon defied his brothers and was destroyed, his descendants forced into the darkness.

Serpent's Quest (Volume one of Lycan Blood)
stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=639663
website
www.janraefrank.com
[url]http://www.daverana.com[/url

[lin]

It's a shame Ant wiped the info he's full of off of here, then.

If you are aware of an indie eBook publisher that gives advances on royalties, by all means tell us about it.

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[crystalwizard]

lin said...
It's a shame Ant wiped the info he's full of off of here, then.

If you are aware of an indie eBook publisher that gives advances on royalties, by all means tell us about it.

Define advances. Do you mean Advance as in interest free loan you pay back out of royalties or do you mean flat up front fee to acquire the right to publish (which you don't pay back).

I find that most people when using the word Advance actually mean flat fee, not loan to be paid back.

[lin]

A flat fee is a flat fee so far as I know. And advance on royalties is a sum given in anticipation of future royalty payments.

Ant and 'wolorine' were talking like they know quite a bit about publishing. So I assume they are talking about advance against royalty, which is the way people tend to talk about book contract payments.

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[Malachi]

lin said...
A flat fee is a flat fee so far as I know. And advance on royalties is a sum given in anticipation of future royalty payments.

Ant and 'wolorine' were talking like they know quite a bit about publishing. So I assume they are talking about advance against royalty, which is the way people tend to talk about book contract payments.

As Cuss said, Ant and I have spent the last 10+ publishing very successfully in the RPG circuit, which from everything we've been able to see is about 10 years ahead of the micro-press/small-press circuit in terms of art standards, writing standards, editing standards, layout design, payment, community cohesion, and about a dozen other things. But, what one does not do in RPG publishing is offer advances. It's just not that type of business model.

But, just as a lose comparison, the 'industry standard' in the RPG circuit for a beginning B&W interior artist is no less than $25 per illustration. And it's not unusual for an RPG book to have over a dozen of them. That's on top of the $200-500 'standard' cover art prices. And those are Work for Hire prices, that's not getting into royalties. Which doesn't say anything about what writers get paid, or the business models the publishers use that don't involve lulu and it's jacked-up cut of the profits. But it does point in the very general direction of how much money goes into production of those books.

What you have to keep in mind is that this micro-press level of publishing that we're dealing with here is not the only branch of publishing one can know a lot about. 'Publishing' is a much broader ocean than that.

Yes, I have gone back to my original nickname.

Art Director: Daverana Enterprises & Flashing Swords Magazine
artdirector@davarana.com

[lin]

To say the very least.


You were pretty definite that standard royalty figures are chump change, but STILL have never specified (I won't cop your gratuitous use of the term 'stonewall') just what sort of payment structures and models for the author do exist in this teeny little publishing ghetto.


Hmm, so you have guys there who will do SF/F illustrations for $25? How could I plug into that talent pool as a buyer?

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[Malachi]

The 'standard' cost of a 1/4 page B&W illustration in the RPG publishing market averages about $25. I honestly don't have a lot of figures to quote you on writing structures, it's been too long since I had any noteworthy writing to even remember. Ant would be able to tell you far more than you wanted to know about it from a writer's PoV, but seems to lost interest in this thread. Heck to be honest so have I.

As for RPG publishing being a teeny little publishing ghetto... I can't even think of anything at this hour, after the day I've had, to even address how silly that is.

Yes, I have gone back to my original nickname.

Art Director: Daverana Enterprises & Flashing Swords Magazine
artdirector@davarana.com

[lin]

I got that concept of a tiny ghetto from you, actually.

And now it looks like while you scoffed at the payouts I mentioned you have nothing to offer to support your sneer at how low they are. Well, if $25 will buy an illustration in that neighborhood. my guess it the writers aren't getting so rich they would join you and the Ant from scoffing and hooting at standard schedules. But no big.

What interests me now is the idea that there are people out there used to working that cheap for illustrations. Is there some site where I could contact those illustrators?

BTW, I was going to congratulate you on your mastery of Latin until I realized you had misspelled 'daverana' in your email. [img]/emoticons/smile.gif[/img]

But once I got that straightened out, I accesed the Davarana site where you are the art director (and possibly sole owner bottlewasher?) and found this schedule:

We do not offer advances. We are a royalty only publisher.
We offer 25% of cover price for ebooks sold through distributors and 40% for books sold on our website.
For print books, we pay 10% of cover price.
All books are first published as ebook original. Our rule of thumb for doing a print edition is that any ebook selling over 100 copies will be considered for a print edition.

And after a LOT of work and poking around finally managed to get to purchase points for you books there and find them selling for like $4.24. So twenty five percent is a little over a buck and forty percent is like $1.75.

Yet you sneer at my statement that writers tend to make only a couple of bucks per book sold.

I don't get it. Perhaps you do?

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[lin]

Are you starting to figure out why Ant bailed out of this and deleted his posts?

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[Malachi]

lin said...
I got that concept of a tiny ghetto from you, actually.

And now it looks like while you scoffed at the payouts I mentioned you have nothing to offer to support your sneer at how low they are. Well, if $25 will buy an illustration in that neighborhood. my guess it the writers aren't getting so rich they would join you and the Ant from scoffing and hooting at standard schedules. But no big.
What interests me now is the idea that there are people out there used to working that cheap for illustrations. Is there some site where I could contact those illustrators?

You got the concept from me? Interesting, that. I don?t see where or how, but? okay.

So, you?re saying that $25 for a ? page B&W illustration is a <u>ghetto cheap</u> price in micro press/small press publishing? This strikes me as odd, given that everywhere I?ve been to, and everyone I?ve talked to since I stepped foot into this branch of the publishing tree has basically said that SOP is to find artists who are so green they?ll work for nothing but the credits in many cases, or to use PD stock art or clip art instead of hiring an artist. In either event, the impression that?s been given to me by everyone ? except you so far ? is that art is an afterthought at best.

But if you?re looking for artists who presume the ?industry standard? begins at that price, and goes up from there? then I suggest you look where the RPG publishing professionals and semi-pro?s hang out. RPGNet might be helpful, although very possibly snarky as hades.

lin said...
BTW, I was going to congratulate you on your mastery of Latin until I realized you had misspelled 'daverana' in your email. [img]/emoticons/smile.gif[/img]

Nice catch. My typing isn?t what it used to be, but at least I can fix that now.

lin said...
But once I got that straightened out, I accesed the Davarana site where you are the art director (and possibly sole owner bottlewasher?) and found this schedule:

Good lord no, I don?t put much stock in one-man-shows overall. You want the owner, talk to Cussedness.

As for the site and its contents; the site itself is currently undergoing a complete re-haul & re-design. I know some of the information there will be changing, while I presume some of it won?t be. Being the A.D., I can only speak for the art submissions guidelines. That information will be completely re-written when I have the time to finish it. As for Daverana?s prices and pay rates, they may well be painfully low. The company is still new and operating on a new startup budget. I know that Cussedness wants to be able to pay better when the company can support it.

And after a LOT of work and poking around finally managed to get to purchase points for you books there and find them selling for like $4.24. So twenty five percent is a little over a buck and forty percent is like $1.75.

Yet you sneer at my statement that writers tend to make only a couple of bucks per book sold.

I don't get it. Perhaps you do?[/quote]

What you initially stated was ?I would say that on a POD book selling for around $14.95 you might expect to see a dollar, maybe two.?.
Now I?ll grant you that I have a tendency to lump E-books and PoD books together, so perhaps this is a point of contention that ? for my part ? is my fault. But it seems to me we?ve drifted a bit from ?you might expect to see a dollar, maybe two, on a $14.95 book? to ?the company you?re working for, at their stated rate, would give you $1.75 on a $4.24 book?.
And yes, just to clarify ? e-books in the RPG circuit can easily range on average from anywhere between $2 and $20? and god help me there was even a print book put out a few years ago that was priced at over $100 and sold like crazy.
So, the question is? are we sneering at $1-2 off of $14.95, or off of $4.24? And how do expect-able projected sales numbers factor into the equation?

And I know why Ant bailed... he decided the thread wasn't worth caring about enough. And yes, I understand why he bailed completely.

Yes, I have gone back to my original nickname.

Art Director: Daverana Enterprises & Flashing Swords Magazine
artdirector@daverana.com

[lin]

Well, if you are going to sneer at a couple of bucks, does it really matter what it's a percentage of????

And it's always cooler to sneer based on information. You guys refused to give any, just giggled about figures that aren't too out of line with what you seem to think is great pay.
I had to dig them out myself. (And that is the hardest book site I've EVER seen to try to find out what should be REALLY out front....how do I buy the damn book and what does it cost. If you designed that site, go back and redo it.

God knows what you understanding of Ant kicking over his posts and floucing out is, but I'd say it's because he came on all big and knowlegable, couldn't cope with the slightest challenge to the bombast he was shipping and booked rather than have an adult discussion. The way you are.

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[Jaqhama]

Well now this has all been very interesting to read.


I'm especially enjoying the sniping...made me chuckle.


I've got one thing of note out of this thread...that RPG companies don't want to pay artists and authors anything more than a pittance.


Mind you...I've noticed that the majority of SFF magazines and webzines don't pay more than a pittance either. But then that is understandable given how few copies of their products they are probably selling.


But an RPG company...paying a guy $25 bucks per b&amp;w pic...and how much an author per story?


I hope we're not talking major RPG companies here? I hope we're talking small fry, hardly sell anything RPG companies? Because otherwise the RPG companies are coming perioulsy close to being accused of ripping off their artists and writers.


I'm paying a guy who's doing some illustrations for me more than the aforementioned RPG companies are paying. And yes, he's a new, unknown artist.


And once again I note that I get paid a whole hell of a lot more for the short stories I write outside of the SFF community. Although a new RPG company paid me a lot more than what the RPG companies here are claiming...but then I already know that the Editor who paid me isn't a tightwad. He pays good money for good writing. Should be more like him in the RPG world. I didn't realise how tight fisted they were.


I can well understand why people go with Lulu...it would be good if some other POD companies started to compete with Lulu however...all they'd have to do is offer a similar service at a better price...they'd be practically guaranteed to make money. I think the general feel is that Lulu takes too high a percentage of the profits of the book being sold yes? (At least that's the impression I get.) So surely the market is wide open for other POD companies to jump in and do better?


Cheers: Jaq.











The Jaqzone:
http://kevin-jaqhama-lumley.blogspot.com/
http://alfwarz.blogspot.com/

[lin]

Actually, Jaqhama, I was looking at lulu' new schedule last night. And saw something interesting.

You publish a book with them, it's free. And you can CHOOSE TO HAVE A DOWNLOAD VERSION OPTION! Which means, an eBook.

Your royalty? 100% If you sell it through them they take a buck. They suggest a $5 price, but you can set your own.

But maybe Ant and wolvorine (sic) will come back to explain why people who do that are chumps who don't earn the fabulous money they're used to in RPG world.

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[Jaqhama]

Lin me old mate...


Seeing as how your investigating Lulu at the moment work this out for me:


Once an author has paid Lulu their small fee for the ISBN said author pays no more to them?


Correct?


And Lulu only takes how much for a printed book percentage wise?


I'm asking this because I keep wondering why people selling their booksthrough Lulu aren't selling them cheaper?


The postage costs aren't included in the book price are they? My thoughts being that one could knock out a series of say pulp sci-fi adventure, max of 200 pages per book. Sell the book for say 12 dollars usa. Instead of writing a 300 plus page tome and asking twenty dollars and above for it.


Why do authors on Lulu think people will pay the same amount for their self published novels as a novel from a major publishing house? I can't work that out.


I think the pulp side of writing could be doing very well thru a POD company...but historically pulp novels are 120 to 200 pages and sell for much less than a 'big' publishers (supposedly) classier novel.


Curious: Jaq.





The Jaqzone:
http://kevin-jaqhama-lumley.blogspot.com/
http://alfwarz.blogspot.com/

[lin]

Trying to figure that site out drive me nuts, actually. SO many dead ends and mess-ups and you can't get figures without running through the process lots of times.

One thing, the supposedly changed their policy on 'Published by You' and it DOESN'T cost a fee for the ISBN and listings. Hooray and all that.

The big trouble seems to come when they top it off with 40% for the retailer. Suddenly your 320 page book is going for $30 and you're getting like $3 out of it.

Okay I THINK one way to do this might be to publish it, check the box to make it available as a 'download', then emphasize the sales of the download instead of the print book.

But I couldn't swear to it.

You get it a lot cheap going straight to LSI.

But it's a quick, easy, free way to get an eBook out and almost all the ebook money is yours to keep.

Let me know if you can gorm it out better

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[lin]

I figured that much out by publishing a book, then deleting it, by the way. So that's one way to get the answers.

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[hughhowey]

Everything lin has said in this thread is spot-on.

There's a ton of sharks out there that want to tell aspiring writers otherwise, but they're feeding off of vanity and ego. Expect to make between $1-$2 per book you sell. Unless, of course, you want to publish it yourself. Then you can expect to make $4-$6 per book, work 80 hours a week, and maybe sell a few hundred copies a month.

If you just want to see your name in print, use Amazon's POD service. If you want a wide readership and don't care about the money, give your stories away digitally. If you want friends and family to read what you've written in a pretty package, spend the money at iUniverse. If you want to make vast fortunes sitting around at home in your underwear... okay... I'm gonna keep that secret to myself.

[Gbondoni]

Well, self-publishing has a lot more in the problem department than just the 80 hours, although that is an important consideration.

The thing about self-publishing (at least from the author's viewpoint) is that there are no filters, no quality control and no gatekeepers. Which means that every no-talent hack can (and is) selling their incredibly bad book to an unsuspecting public, and that public has begun to equate Lulu with 'unreadable tripe' (the word I was going to use wasn't 'tripe', but I deeply respect the fact that this is a polite venue). The only books I would ever consider buying from Lulu are those from a publisher I know and respect who uses Lulu exclusively for printing services.

There's a reason traditional publishing has a ladder system, and a reason most 'writers' never get their work published by traditional houses, and it has nothing to do with cliques and conspiracies (and if ANYONE whines that it does, he or she will immediately lose my respect - only the truly clueless and talentless who have no chance to make it in the real publishing world whine about publishing conspiracies).

The decision to self-publish might be the right one for certain kinds of books from a purely economical standpoint (especially if you're really well known), but not from the standpoint of the quality of a work. Quality demands gatekeepers.

E-books, on the other hand CAN be made to a professional standard. I haven't seen much in the way of advances being paid for this, but royalties, as cuss explains above, are higher than for printed books.

And we should all remember that the way to make real money isn't to get a bigger cut on each book, but to sell more books!

Visitmy livejournal! http://bondo-ba.livejournal.com/
Or my Homepage! www.gustavobondoni.com.ar

[darkbow]

I went ahead and self-published a novel, a screenplay and couple of short story collections (all but 2 of the stories had been published elsewhere)in e-book form for Amazon's Kindle. I make roughly 35 percent of each sale, with the price set by me (though Amazon sometimes offers discounts while still paying me 35 percent of my original price).

Gustavo, I actually agree with everything you said about self publishing. That ladder systems is there for a reason, a good reason.

I didn't come to self publishing easily. I did it for two reasons.

The first was financial, and let me say upfront it didn't cost me a dime to put my work on Amazon. Frankly, I've lost two jobs in the last year and haven't had regular, steady employment in more than 6 months. I'm not getting rich off my Kindle sales, but that combined with some other online writing I've done is helping to pay the bills. When it came to keeping the lights on and feeding my family, it was an easy decision to set aside my ego.

Secondly, I decided to self publish my fantasy novel because I've moved on to other projects. I sort of felt like that novel, actually it'll be a trilogy whenever I decide to put out the other two books, was something from my past that needed to be finished and set aside. I didn't feel it was impatience on my part, though one might argue it was. I'd had a couple of close calls with publishers, and one with an agent, and just wanted to get the whole thing behind me after writing and editing and submitting for the last 5 or 6 years.

Was it a mistake to self publish? I don't know. Maybe. I still own all rights to what I've put out on the Kindle, so I can withdraw and publish elsewhere if an editor should ever want it or I should decide to self-publish in print. I still have some emotional hangups about myself breaking down to self-publish, but again, it's helped my family. And I didn't see much difference between myself publishing what (to me) was old material and professional authors who are using the Kindle to self-publish older works of theirs that had never been accepted by a publisher (mystery/horror writer J.A. Konrath, for example). Other than the fact those authors came with a built-in audience of one size or another. I didn't and don't equate myself with someone desparate to get their book published. I didn't feel that desparate emotionally, though I was for some cash, obviously.

Besides, like I said, I'm on to other projects. I'm working on a mainstream novel I'm still hoping to sell traditionally and I still have short stories out there in submission. After that, more novels. Will traditional editors and publishers hold it against me that I self published? Some will, some won't. I hope not, but I'll live with my choices.

Available for the Amazon Kindle
City of Rogues: Part I of the Kobalos Trilogy, epic fantasy novel
Preludes: four stories of the fantastic
SEVER: five tales of horror
Dark Side of Io (a screenplay)

Short stories
"Beneath a Persian Sun" upcoming in Carnivah House's "Infinity Swords" anthology
"Zombie Tears" upcoming at Dark Fire, "Devil and Devil Damned" at Flashes in the Dark, "The Death of Lester Williams" in the anthology Deadlines, "Deep in the Land of the Ice and Snow" in "The Return of the Sword" anthology, "The Way the Sunlight Lies Upon Her Hair" at Every Day Fiction

For more, check out my blog at www.tyjohnston.blogspot.com</A></A>

[Gbondoni]

Ty, your case is a bit different. You've shown the ability to sell repeatedly to traditional publishers, so I would expect a certain amount of quality in your work, and wouldn't hesitate to buy it (if I had a Kindle). You're definitely an outlier in the self-published ranks (which is probably why you're actually selling some books!!).

And I agree - some publishers might hold it against you (unless your sales numbers are through the roof). But most will probably just ignore it. A history of self-publishing says nothing about the quality of the novel in front of them, after all.

Good luck with that mainstream novel - hope to see your name on the NYT bestseller list soon!

Visitmy livejournal! http://bondo-ba.livejournal.com/
Or my Homepage! www.gustavobondoni.com.ar

[lin]

The whole idea that there is some 'ladder' put in place to 'protect unwitting readers' (all those poor idiots out there) is quaint.

Well, know, actually, it's lame, the sort of reverse teleology writers get when looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

It's like this: there's a market. Publishers feed that market (and vice versa) and want the books that most people will buy. The books THEY THINK most people will buy...an important distinction.

Agents make their money by feeding publishers the books the agents think they will buy.

None of this is done to protect the masses, it's by no means a 'quality filter', and the people involved are by no means better judges of what people want to read than the reading public is, itself.

You don't want to buy into that whole 'canon' game the pubcos and agents want you to believe.


I mean, you can if you want.

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[Gbondoni]

OK, so I'm lame. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the reality.

I disagree with your opinion about the quality filter (I review books - both self- and traditionally-published - and read slush). As both a reader (I read about 100 books a year) and a reviewer, I have to say that 99.99999% of all self published fiction is garbage of the worst sort, precisely because only the author ever saw it. The needle in the haystack is so hard to find that it's difficult to justify the effort.

When I buy a book I do not want to buy something no one but the author considered good enough to print (this, in essence, is why self-publishing exists, despite laughable attempts at creating an economic justification). This is my opinion as a reader. I want quality control (and, as you can see through tracking sales numbers, so does every other reader out there who isn't related to the author). Most readers I know share this view, which is why you've never heard of a single self-published writer (unless you happen to run into them on a message board).

Hell, I'd love to self-publish my work, but then no one would read it (well, my grandmother would, but that's about it). No one said writing is easy.

Visitmy livejournal! http://bondo-ba.livejournal.com/
Or my Homepage! www.gustavobondoni.com.ar