This post by Kristen Eckstein originally appeared on The Future of Ink on 9/5/14.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a children’s book author, fiction writer, non-fiction how-to author, business person, or even a fine artist. The fact is, in this modern age of book publishing, you’re in business…
Period.
You’re in sales, you’re in the business of selling books, and hopefully you’re in the business of using your books as a gateway to make even more money with external products and services.
Any seasoned author will tell you that you won’t quickly get rich off book sales profits and royalties alone. The average traditionally-published non-fiction book royalty is a whopping 6% after print cost and the distributor’s discount.
That’s about 9 cents on a book that retails for $10. To make back the average advance of $500 for this type of book, you’d have to sell 5,556 copies. That’s over 5,500 copies before you’d see another penny from the publisher!
On the same indie-published book (that is, you own the distribution rights and publish under your own name, not through a self-publishing services company or vanity publisher), you’d make about $1.50 per copy.
To make $500 in book sales alone, you’d still need to sell over 300 copies.
Click here to read the full post on The Future of Ink.