>I just have never met an author who was at liberty to disclose their
>royalties. I also wanted to comment that the royalty seemed quite low.
>
Why wouldn't an author discuss royalty rates? It's a standard
conversation topic on writers' lists, and there's no clause in my
contract or any author's contract I've ever seen that prohibts it. Maybe
the authors you're met were ashamed about how little they were
getting.... :)
The "standard" for computer books is 15% of the publisher's net (i.e.
wholesale price). After you figure returns, bulk discount deals, and
other finagling, that means an author gets about $1.50 per book based on
a $29.95 cover price even though the percentage looks at first glance
like it should give the author closer to $2.25.
A few publishers, notably No Starch and APress, will pay up to 15% of
gross, but the tradeoff is that they give little or no advance money,
and sales tend to be smaller (not much exposure in big chain bookstores)
than if you go with one of the biggies. I got a middle-of-the-road
advance for P&CL - neither huge nor tiny - in exchange for me keeping
video and name rights. My last book was a "business book," not a
"computer book," so I got a higher advance for it.
I also get a nice cut of things like movie rights (figure the odds!)
and translations. Plus if this sucker takes off and goes into more
editions or someone like Novell wants a version custom-written for their
distro, I get paid more ca$h for what amounts to an easy cut and past
rewrite of a few chapters *and* the royalty stream grows. Plus there's a
good chance for a series of "Point & Click _____" books. If that happens
I'll get a small bit from each title.
Writing computer books is nearly vanity publishing -- something you do
for career advancement instead of for the cash -- unless you can turn
out 4 or more per year, in which case it can be a passable living for
someone living around here, although not nearly enough to live on
decently in NYC or Silly Valley. As long as I have a full-time job, I
doubt that I can handle more than one book per year, but if I lost my
job I could probably crank out enough books to survive, especially with
some magazine articles and maybe a little cab driving on the side.
Always good to have a backup.
AND if you "score" now and then with that one sells enough copies to
pull in $50,000/year or more in royalties *with no more work besides
updates*, and you can pull one of those off every 3 or 4 years, at some
point you can quit your day job and coast, maybe crank out two puter
books and a (crapshoot) novel every year. I know people who have gotten
this pattern going, and I probably can too if I'm willing to plug long
and hard enough.
- Robin
PS - Anyone can do this. I have no particular talent. It's just a lot of
*work* to get to the royalties-as-sinecure point.
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