number-crunching -- Jules

Just putting my December royalty figures into the spread sheet -- the statement arrived just before Christmas but this is the first chance I've had to do more than glance at it. Time to throw out a few numbers that might be of interest.

My best-selling book is still Dolphin Dreams, which has now reached 2151 copies sold since it went on sale. Yes, very much small press numbers, but not bad going for a small press book. For the curious, around a thousand of those came from direct sales from the publisher's website before it went made available through the distributors, and about 3/4 of the total number since release is from direct sales. For distributor sales, Fictionwise has around double the numbers going through All Romance eBooks.

Second best is the first Lord and Master book, which has sold 1829 copies. Again, around 3/4 through the publisher website, but this time three times as many from Fictionwise as from ARe.

That's the general pattern on my books -- major share is through Loose Id, with the largest chunk of distributor sales coming through Fictionwise, but a significant fraction of distributor sales through ARe, and a tiny trickle through others. (My ebook titles aren't on Amazon, so I have nothing to report one way or the other there.) That's one author, through one publisher; other authors report different experiences.

The second Lord and Master book has now sold 1020 copies, almost as many as the first book had after the same number of months on release. That's pretty pleasing for a sequel, as it suggests that a lot of people liked the first one.

Promises To Keep is the oldest of my titles which are still in print at Loose Id, having been released for Halloween 2004. Yes, more than five years ago, not long after Loose Id opened. It still sells half a dozen copies a month -- not a great deal of money, but rather gratifying nevertheless that people are still interested in buying an old backlist title.

A couple of points to note here: a) my books typically sell 500-1500 copies in the initial 2 year contract, b) that's a two year contract taking only the rights the publisher has a reasonable chance of using, not a life-of-copyright contract grabbing all rights, c) I get a detailed monthly royalty statement, on time, that breaks down exactly which titles sold through which venues, and how much money I got for each venue and title. Now, obviously I'd like to be in mass market paperback and looking at numbers with another zero or two on the end -- but even in the small press market, there are good and bad publishers. Anyone with a zero fewer on the end of their sales numbers should be asking themselves if there are better options. Ditto if your publisher claims that it's too difficult to provide detailed royalty statements so that you know what they owe you. As for life-of-copyright, that's not automatically bad, but they had better be offering something worthwhile in return.

But... even someone who can sell ebooks consistently at that level can have the occasional "sink without trace" title. I've got one that barely scraped past 200 after two years. I have an idea as to why, but no hard evidence. There are no guarantees in this game, just ways to improve the odds in your favour.

Back to work on the accounts. One of the joys of wandering from country to country is that one ends up having to file tax returns in more than one of them, and they have different rules. Blech...

{Note: all numbers in this assume me not cocking up entering the data into 1-2-3...)

[Mirrored from my personal blog.]

The Dangers of Net

It seems that a few erotic romance epublisher have quietly swapped over to calculating royalties on a net basis. I am by no means a lawyer but thought I would raise a few issues to keep in mind as an author, and I would be interested in hearing your opinions.

1) Unless otherwise stated royalties should be able to be assumed to be based on cover price. So 40% means that you get 40c of every dollar a customer pays for your books. In some cases it might be considered easier to calculate sales through a distributor based on wholesale, so 40% means you get 40c for every dollar the distributor pays the publisher. As the percentage taken by distributor is public information in most cases this is still pretty clear. 40% of wholesale through fictionwise is 20% of retail as they take 50% of retail for themselves.

2) "Net" has no uniformly agreed meaning in general, in publishing or in epublishing. So when choosing a publisher that calculates royalties on net you do not really know exactly how much you will end up getting paid unless they specify net costs and you have a way of estimating how high these will be over the life of the contract. Your 50% on net may in fact be less than someone else's 40% on retail. When you receive the contract net should absolutely be defined in black and white--specifying what costs the publisher is effectively asking you to pay. Some of these might be borderline reasonable, such as some set up fees. But all the same, use of net calculations may suggest a publisher that sells in low volumes and is therefore wouldbe in danger of not recouping these costs through profits.

The question that occurs to me is this: should authors pay these costs at all? If you would not pay up front cash money for them, why would you pay for them through royalties? Some authors do not have a problem with paying some set-up fees (e.g Whiskey Creek Press's set up fee for a print option) others hold a firm line of keeping the money flowing towards the author. Ultmately I see the author as providing the prose, and the publisher as setting royalties where they need to be so that all costs are covered by the publisher's share--anything else begins to enter the realm subsidy or co-operative publishing.

As such, moving without a clear announcement and explanation from retail to net calculations of royalties might be seen as a less than transperant way of dealing with a short fall in profitability. Backlist royalties should still be paid according to a retail percentage unless the author signs a new contract or addendum.

Once again, all just my semi-informed opinion. If you know more or better, please comment. :)