In recent years, the publishing industry has been greatly changed by the invention of e-books and their dedicated readers. With the many advantages of being able to carry around your entire library in a small, slim device, one would expect most avid readers to abandon all their hardbacks and paperbacks and spring for an e-book reader. However, sales data from the last 5 years show that while the sale of e-books is growing slightly every year, hardbacks with perfect binding printing still account for the highest percentage of book sales in the United States.
In other countries, the popularity of hardbacks and paperbacks is even more significant, as the right to purchase and publish e-books in foreign countries is a very complicated process that results in a product that is very expensive for the average consumer. Perhaps if the cost of e-books was significantly less than the cost of purchasing hardbacks or paperbacks, the percentage of readers who would purchase an e-book copy of their favorite novels would be higher. However, for now, sales data maintains that readers today prefer to read textbooks, novels, poetry, and works of nonfiction in physical form. Because of the different regulations put in place when publishing an e-book, hardback, or perfect binding printing copy of a certain work, authors today will need to discuss the royalty rates that they are due for the sale of each of these formats. In most cases, the percentage of e-book sales that each author will bring in averages around six percent.
Therefore, for each e-book copy of an author’s novel that is sold for fourteen dollars, he or she will earn about eighty-four cents. While e-books have definitely grown in popularity over recent years, the vastly more popular form is the hardback or perfect binding printing copy. While every reader is able to purchase a hardback in order to read a certain novel or work of nonfiction, only a certain percentage of readers have the capabilities of reading an e-book version of the same work. Because hardback books are the most costly way to purchase a certain work, the royalty rates that the average author will earn are also higher. In general, the rates for royalties on hardback copies average around twelve percent.
However, in order to earn any royalties for each book that he or she sells, an author will already had to have earned out enough money in royalties to surpass the advance that he or she was given by their publisher when the manuscript was sold. For example, if an author sells a manuscript to a certain publishing house in the United States for ninety-five thousand dollars, the author will need to earn a total of ninety-five thousand dollars in royalties before he or she will be issued any additional royalty checks by the publisher. Therefore, if the author earns twelve percent in royalties for each hardback or perfect binding printing copy of his or her novel that is sold, over seven hundred and ninety thousand copies will need to be sold before the advance will have been earned out!
When looked at in this manner, it seems that no author, besides those few who are lucky enough to pen a breakout hit, will ever earn out his or her advance. However, when you also consider the number of copies of paperbacks and e-books that will be purchased when those versions are published, it becomes more likely that each author earns out his or her advance over time. Another way that authors today can increase their chance of earning additional royalty payments for their work is to market their work excessively to libraries across the nation.