Book Publishing Royalties Compared
The goal of most authors is to profit from the sale of their books. Mill City Press is here to ensure that authors keep 100% of the revenue from their book sales. When you pay a company to publish your book, you should not have to pay them a cut of every book sold too. We don´´t have royalty calculation charts on our site because our authors earn every dollar from their book sales after printing costs and trade discounts to any third-party distributor (e.g. Amazon.com). See how much you´ll earn on each book you sell.
In our opinion, selling your book through a publishing company´s online bookstore doesn´t entitle them to keep 30% to 80% of the profits. Sure, they deserve a some reasonable fee for handling the transaction, but a huge percentage of the profits? We say no.
The chart below examines the royalties paid by several self-publishing companies for a 200 page, 5.5 x 8.5 paperback, with a laminated, full color cover that retails for $13.99 (note that some publishing companies inflate the printing costs so much that they force a book this size to retail for a ridiculously high amount).
Publish the book above with Mill City Press and for every 100 you sell you will make $729 more than you´d make with iUniverse, one of the better self-publishing companies. In reviewing the chart, consider that this book only costs the publisher $3.90 to print. Click here to learn what these publishers tell authors the print costs are.
|
Publisher
|
Retail Price
|
Printing Cost
|
Royalty % Paid to Author
|
Royalty Earned By Author Per Book Sold
|
Profit Made By Publisher Per Book Sold (includes profits from printing)
|
Total earned by Author from selling 100 books
|
|
Mill City Press
|
$13.99
|
$3.90
|
100%
|
$10.09
|
$0
|
$1,009
|
|
iUniverse*
|
$13.99
|
$3.90
|
20%
|
$2.80
|
$7.29
|
$280
|
|
Lulu**
|
$13.99
|
$3.90
|
31%
|
$4.38
|
$5.71
|
$438
|
|
Trafford****
|
$16.22 (requires you to sell for at least this price)
|
$3.90
|
16.5%
|
$2.67
|
$9.65
|
$267
|
|
Xlibris*****
|
$18.69 (requires you to sell for at least this price)
|
$3.90
|
25%
|
$4.67
|
$10.12
|
$467
|
|
Authorhouse******
|
$13.40
|
$3.90
|
30%
|
$4.02
|
$5.48
|
$402
|
This chart proves how important it is to make sure that you don´t allow self-publishing companies keep money they haven´t earned.
So, why does Mill City Press not take any royalties? What´s the catch?
We hear these questions a lot. The answer is simple. We want authors to make money from publishing, which can´t happen when publishers mark-up print costs and then take royalties for not doing anything. We hope that authors will invest the money they save in printing and royalties into the marketing of their books.
For example, using the money saved to buy ads on Google that drive readers to a high-ranking website is a more effective use of your money than just handing it over to a publisher for no reason. If our authors are interested in our online marketing strategies for their books, we´d love to be involved. If our authors want to use the extra money they make in royalties for any other purpose, we support that too.
* http://www.iuniverse.com/how-we-work/pricing-royalties/author-discounts.htm
** http://www.lulu.com/help/index.php?fSymbol=book_pricing
*** http://outskirtspress.com/calculator.php
**** http://www2.trafford.com/calc/main.htm
***** http://www2.xlibris.com/bookpricing/chart2.pdf
****** taken from section on Authorhouse in The Fine Print of Self-Publishing (p.184)
