My Amazon bestseller made me nothing

And then gotten them printed on a T-shirt.

Then take a picture of yourself wearing the T-shirt, and make it your Facebook profile.

Screenshot that, and have that printed on one of them picture cakes.

Post a picture of that cake to SportsJournalists.com.

Profit.

 

Having 4,000 copies result in $12,000 means you have a really good royalty rate and I'd love to hear how you/your agent negotiated the terms. My guess is a good first tier and on the list price, not net receipts. I've sold that amount of books since my book has been out and my statements haven't yielded close to that, but my publisher is a university press and obviously can't offer the same rates as a larger houses. Still, $3 a copy is pretty good shit.

 

Well, we are "arguing" two different things here. Royalties has nothing to do with Amazon's ranking. (And yes you get paid for that). What I'm saying is the rank has nothing to do with sales.

Bottom line, this book really wasn't a bestseller - which kind of proves what I was told was correct (number based on views, not sales).

And for whomever said about the $3 per book being a good royalty, I agree, but in the story he said it was an independent book publisher and he got a good rate (for whatever reason). I'd like to have that rate, that's for sure.

 

Amazon's list is based on actual sales. not clicks. If they based the list on clicks, authors would never leave the house, they'd just sit there clicking all day. Amazon does track clicks for promotional reasons, in terms of what you see when you visit the site. So if you click on a lot of diet books, you'll see more diet books featured when you return.

The mindgame of the Amazon list is that a single updraft of sales can make you believe you have a monster hit--BESTSELLER!!--when all you really have is a hot streak that ends as quickly as it started. JR's post above summed it up perfectly. You can be the #1 SELLER in Sports->Football->Coaching->College->Instruction->Youth->....but #128,989 over all.

As for the royalty issue: A $3 royalty on a $20 book = 15%, which is a standard hardcover rate (usually after 10,000 copies are sold). Not extraordinary at all. The surge in ebooks and self-published books has made royalties somewhat murkier. Read the contracts, all royalties are not created equal.

There was a discussion on another thread about writing a book for no advance, in hopes that the "next" book will pay off. Faulty logic. Publishers don't pay for your experience, they pay for a book that can earn revenue. They may factor in experience when deciding if you're worth the risk, but the bottom line is whether your book will sell. So unless you've just written a huge seller and everyone is clamoring for what's next, you're just a guy who worked for free while someone else profited from your work.

With the serious decline of physical bookstores, publishers are buying less, paying less, and printing less. Don't be afraid to explore non-traditional options, especially in the digital area. Lots of new opportunities out there, folks.

 

I use Blurb.com to self-publish. My second book arrived today. I can set profits on top of the price Blurb charges to make the book. For this one I set the profits at $4 on a $16 book. It's a $20 interactive coffee table book (you can order larger sizes and the price and my profit would be a little bigger).

Photos of everyone who did their art thing in the Graffiti Vault -- with QR codes on several of them because I wrote about them on my blog. I'm just POSITIVE! I'll sell a million copies. Right now I'm at zero.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/3392195/60866eb9ad43f8f535c7b143a3ce83422ff8808a

 

Getting 15 percent ($3) on a $20 hardcover book would be an amazing first tier royalty rate. Usually you get an escalating rate of, say, 10 percent on the first 5,000 copies, 12.5 percent from 5,001-10,000, and 15 percent on all copies thereafter.

But this guy said he made $12,000 on his first 4,000 copies, so that seems high to get 15 percent on his first amount of books sold, but not impossible if there isn't an escalator clause in his contract. But if there is an escalator clause and that's his first tier royalty rate, it's reasonable to assume it gets even better, like 17 to 20 percent, after 5,000 or 10,000 copies, which just seems really high.