hello and welcome back to my channel i'm here today my last video of 2020 to talk about one of
the biggest things people want to know how much do authors actually get paid so do authors just
get a lump sum of money straight away when they create their book do authors all get paid the
exact same across different publishing houses and is it possible to be a full-time author welcome
back to my channel and i hope you enjoy this video so what i'm going to talk about today is advances
and royalties you might already have a bit of an idea about what these are but i'm going to
be talking to you about the outline of what they actually are so most traditional publishing houses
will give the author an advance against royalties this is an advance like it says to the author an
amount of money that they basically get based on what they think the book will earn in future
advances are usually paid in installments and traditionally this is in three parts
they're always at certain points in the book development so this and particularly at bloomsbury
it's on them on the contract signing and so when the author actually signs the contract with the
publishing house and gives the rights to publish their material then it's when the manuscript is
actually delivered and then finally it's on the book publication date so for an author that's
been working with a publisher for a couple of years they might not actually get their third
installment of their advance until the book is actually published and that could be two years
afterwards so an advance against royalties so what this basically means is for every pound that you
receive as an advance you have to earn this back in book sales through your royalty rate before
you earn any extra money so therefore you won't receive a penny extra and on top of your advance
until your advance earns out from royalties it's essentially a gamble from the publisher's point
of view because if the author does really well and the book sells really well that's great for both
of them and but if it doesn't do well then the author will still get their advance that doesn't
get taken away from them at all they'll still earn that advance they just won't necessarily want
and and they won't necessarily earn anything extra on top of that through future royalties and so yes
it could do really well it could do really badly and so yeah the author gets paid the advance
regardless of whether the publisher makes back their money or not a lot of authors have agents
and if you do have an agent their income will depend on how much the agent takes from this
so if you have an agent the agent will get some of the money before sending the rest onto the author
if you don't have an agent however you obviously as the author get the full amount
agents essentially ensure that you get the best possible deal from the publisher
so ideally the royalty rates will change over time depending on how many sales you make so for
example for the first 10 000 books that you might sell you'll make x percentage and then after that
for every you know ten thousand books after that you'll make an even higher percentage
um this is all done right in the beginning stages when the author signs the contract with the
publisher depending on um how well they anticipate this book to do in future so royalty rates what
are the actual rates how much do authors actually get paid so obviously they have advances and this
completely depends on the name of the author if they've already had a lot of books out already and
they're known to do really well or if they're a new author and lots of different things can affect
the different advances in royalty rates but there is kind of like a typical and a standard royalty
rate obviously this does depend in publishing houses this does depend on the author and the
book etc um but typically around 10 is the average for a hardback for a printed book
this can as i said obviously change and then say that's for the first 10 000 books after
that it might got to 12.5 and the next 10 000 books after that and then up again to say 15
after the next 10 000 books are sold so obviously from an office point of view you want to sell as
many books as possible because your royalty rate will eventually increase paperbacks are usually
a smaller percentage as opposed to ebooks they are usually a higher percentage royalty rate for
the author because if you think about it ebooks are mainly all digital and you don't have to pay
for any production costs such as the printing and the delivering of the actual physical hard copies
of the book so yes so therefore the authors will get a higher royalty percentage rate for ebooks
and then this can usually again this usually depends but this is typically around 25
reserves are payments of copies held back by the publisher to compensate for any potential returned
books so this is basically to cover themselves and then royalties are usually paid every six months
now if you self-publish it's obviously completely different where you don't have a publishing house
involved and therefore your royalty rate will be significantly higher now i have spoken about this
book before and this is the publishing business published by bloomsbury it's a guide to starting
out and getting on on page 92 there's a quote from an author here um who's self-published and
she says self-publishing gives me an outlet for projects that outside the mainstream and
a more regular though smaller source of revenue as my self-published titles earn
monthly royalties whereas traditional publishers only pay twice a year so yeah there you have it
royalties are usually paid every six months to the author so does this therefore mean you
can be a full-time author well obviously you can there's plenty of examples out there where people
you know that is their full-time job they are an author but don't be surprised if it is just a side
hustle for a lot of people obviously it takes such a significant amount of their time and their hard
work in creating this material but essentially they won't get the full amount of money because
publishers will have to take some of the money for the work they do for things like
printing the actual books and marketing etc um now a short while ago there was a hashtag that
was trending called publishing paid me and it was essentially to highlight some of the differences
in the industry on how much authors get paid um in regards to their advances and royalty rates
and so i have a couple of examples and so matt haig who i've read a couple of his books which
are fantastic and he revealed that he earned five grand for his first book and then 600 grand for
his tenth book and that just goes to show that obviously if you're a well-established author
your advance will significantly increase because they the publishers kind of know and anticipate
that that book is going to do well but as i said previously matt hague won't then get the 600 000
pounds up front it will be an advance against royalties and so this is usually paid in three
separate installments and then mallory blackman who one of her books is on my list for 2021
um commenting on the hashtag publishing paid me she said my latest contracts contain nda clauses
nondisclosure agreements clauses so i can't say what i earn but it is nowhere near what some white
authors are getting for their nth book where n is a single digit i make a living but i've had to
learn to cut my cloth to fit my income and that kind of shows first hand that obviously author
payments do vary across different authors and here as we're saying compared to white people compared
to black people and obviously this is something that does need to change within the industry so
if you have any thoughts on that please do let me know and then amy schumer who is a famous actress
um her book the girl with the lower back tattoo she was given an advance of nine million dollars
so a couple of the key differences between advances and royalties even though they're
kind of closely linked in together because they are advances against your future royalties and
advances are a set sum of money so that will be say 100 000 pounds whereas royalties are um
measured as a percentage so this will be say 10 for your hardback 8 for your payback and 25 for
your ebook and then the key thing about advances versus royalties is is how conditional they are
so advances the author is guaranteed that money whether or not their book does really well or not
that is a set sum of money that they are definitely going to get providing they meet
the standards that's in their contract so you know delivering their manuscript on time for example
so even if the publisher does not sell enough of their book they don't have to pay back any of
the money that they didn't earn back or anything like that they will still get that money so from
an office point of view that's you know you're guaranteed that income compare this to royalties
and these are conditionals so you only earn your royalty rates after you've earned out your advance
and then you sell more books so say you've completely earned out your advance
and now you're starting to get 10 of every sale that's made on your hardback book
you will only do that if people actually buy your book you know you're not absolutely determined
that if no one buys your book you won't get any extra money through your royalties you
have to actually sell books to make the money so i think it can be really confusing with advances
and royalties and i know and when i first started my publishing journey i was a little bit confused
about how it worked and how authors actually do get paid i hope this cleared up some of the
basics for you and if you do have any specific questions on advances or royalties on how much
authors actually get paid then please do let me know as i said this completely differs across
different publishing houses different authors etc and even within division so if you have
an academic division the royalty rates might completely differ there especially if there's
multiple contributors to one book i think even if you don't necessarily want to go into the finance
side of publishing it's really important that you do have a basic understanding of
an author's income and how royalty rates work and basically the key concept of that an advance
is against your future royalty so you have to earn back that before you start making any
extra money on top of that advance i've also got some examples for you that i found some
contracts whether that be through bloomsbury or ones i found online which and i can give you the
details for in the description below hopefully i'm putting some of these on the screen now
so what these show are just basic examples of contracts it shows when the manuscript has to be
delivered it shows when the advances will be paid and the key installment dates so for example when
the book is actually published will be the final advance payment date and then you have specific
examples here of how much a particular author might receive there are certain contracts out
there and certain publishers will have a template contract for you to browse and so although this
doesn't apply to any particular book and doesn't have any specific values in there it's still there
for you to look at and it's quite handy just to see how that would work in their contract
i think one of the best things that i did is read through an entire contract for one of our books
for me law and rights and contracts was not my first thought when i thought of publishing
it and it didn't particularly interest me but yeah it's one of the best things i did
is reading for a contract because you really get to understand the author's involvement and
how the rights work and how obviously the royalties and advances work
so i would also recommend that you check out the hashtag publishing page me and there's some
news articles on it as well like i think the guardian is one of the ones that i looked at
and i'll put a couple of links in the description below because this is really interesting it gives
you a bit more of an insight like real life examples of how much authors actually got paid
um obviously things are ever-changing and if you have any particular stories please do let
me know because obviously it'll be great to hear that but for now i hope that cleared some things
up for you and you found it a little bit useful do let me know if you did find it useful and this is
most likely going to be my last video of 2020 so thank you so much for the support already and i've
really really enjoyed doing these videos and i've got some exciting things coming for the next year
this includes interviews with professionals which hopefully you've seen some snippets of
on my twitter so yeah thank you so much for the support in 2020 and see you in the new year bye