Locus is one of the bigger houses, and I doubt he got 10%.
Well then, what about unsold copies that get returned at the end of the year? Does the author in Taiwan get to keep those royalties, or only on the books sold? And what happens to those unsold books? Do they get shredded or sold at discount shops? Or garbaged?
I remember once seeing in a bookshop in Keelung (my old happy hunting grounds) some books on the shelves that were published in 2000, 1998, 1996, even 1992 and they were still being sold in the bookstores there? Does that mean the bookstore owner already paid for the books and cannot return them or what? Taiwan publishing is weird that way⌠does anybody make a profit, other than that famous cartoonist JIMMY?
Publishing is about small margins; unless, of course, youâre Scholastic.
âPublishing is about small margins; unless, of course, youâre Scholastic.â
Love that quote, alleycat. Classic!
I did get 10% from Locus, but the book price is NT$230 not NT$280. Itâs a 7-year contract, and they sent me a check for the royalties minus my advance earlier this month. So far Iâve made a little less than a monthâs salary from this book, and I wonât see any more money until December.
Wait till they sell the film rights to Hollywood!
But at least you got your book publishedâand by a major publishing company here in Taiwan at that.
I think itâs great. Youâve done something that most of us (including myself) would like to do: publish a bookâand have it sell.
Yes, heaps of kudos to Poagao, for sure. If it were me, I wouldnât care a jot about the money â Iâd even be glad to shell out twice as much just to get my book on the market (as several other foreigners here have done).
But if one is a professional author, depending on book sales to make a living, then itâs an entirely different matter. In that case, it seems to me that 10% is an exceedingly low percentage of the sale price for the author to receive. As he has contributed more than 90% to the value and production of the book, he ought to be getting more than that. Surely they donât pay so little to writers in the U.S., U.K., and other Western countries, do they?
I had supposed that the reason why books have risen so much in price over the last two or three decades, far more than anything else, is because writers have been getting their hands on much larger royalties. After all, with the advent of computerized printing, publication costs have to be a great deal lower than they were in the old days when all the type was set by hand. Yet while I could buy a good paperback for a few shillings (equivalent to less than NT$10 now) when I was a kid (I still have lots of those on my bookshelves), the same book would sell for 40 or 50 times as much today.
Omni wondered out loud:
âIn that case, it seems to me that 10% is an exceedingly low percentage of the sale price for the author to receive. As he has contributed more than 90% to the value and production of the book, he ought to be getting more than that. Surely they donât pay so little to writers in the U.S., U.K., and other Western countries, do they? âŚI had supposed that the reason why books have risen so much in price over the last two or three decades, far more than anything else, is because writers have been getting their hands on much larger royalties.â
OMNI, welcome to Planet Earth! ⌠No, 10% of the going rate in all nations on Earth, and is sometimes less. But in NYC and UK and Montreal and Sydney, authors always have and always will get just 10%. My uncle works in publishing and he told me like this:
the book sells for US$29.95
the author gets around $3 for every book sold
the rest goes to: the publisher 60%
the book printer
the costs of employing staff of editors, designers, accountants
the bookstore gets 40%
the middleman: the distributors, the truckers, the shipping people
costs of publicity, advertising if any
so while the writer gets 3 dollars out of 30, the other 27 dollars gets divided up by editorial and production and booksellersâŚ
like alleycat said, low marginsâŚ
as for the BIG NAME writers, like Stephen King, they DO GET more than 10%, perhaps 15% tops, and huge advances, and THEY power the book industry. Unfortunately, it is the little guy, the writer nobody knows, who just scrapes by.
That is why most writers also work as university professors, teachers, Internet bloggers and other day jobs. Writing never pays, never has, never will.
But it maybe pays off in other ways. Just ask PaogaoâŚ
or John Ross.
or Richard HartzellâŚ
No, itâs a 10% game across the board. And donât forget the book agent. They get 15% now, in most cases.
Did Paogao have an agent?
I didnât have an agent.
Distributors normally get the book for half of its cover price.
So, for a NT$300 paperback, the publisher only gets NT$150. The distributor needs to make some money, so heâll sell it for that plus 50%, Or NT$225, the book store adds the other NT$75. Distributors risk in that they, depending on the agreement, will take returns. Itâs up to them then to get rid of what hasnât sold.
Why should the publisher, having risked considerably more than the author, have to pay him more than what the maket has set?
Itâs business people, business.
No wonder writers are interested in exploring the potential for selling e-books via the Internet. Then they can receive 100% of all the sales receipts.
Yes, Omni, hopefully soon printers capable of binding small cheap paperbacks will become available, making those e-books so much more viable.
Personal on-demand printing is still a ways off, but hereâs a page of printers who will print one book at a time.
satellitenewspapers.com/ is a print-on-demand system that prints custom newspaper content from dailies around the world.
They have machines, mostly in large hotels, all over the worldâexcept, of course, in Taipei.
I contacted them two years ago, looking to set up a franchise in Taiwan. Never heard back from them tough.
I like to think itâs because of Taiwanâs piracy rating.
Youâve got a quadruple Nelson of posts there, Alley. Better watch your off stump.
Yikes, youre right.
He pushes a wide of cover and scampers through for a comfortable single.
I emailed a friend who works in a Kingstone Bookstore in Taichung and she replied, re HOW BOOKS ARE SOLD in TAIWAN:
âHow to say that
there is one way that you can ask a publisher
to have book put on the recommend books for
the bookstore , of course the bublisher have to
give bookstore for some promote fee .
and one way is let the bookstores to hve books recommend on their website and people will buy it , for another words still have to let the websites get some benefit i guess.
There is no much power for bookstores staff ,
we canât purchase new books by ourself , we have
purchase department in Taipei, they buy books and we sell it until the second turns we can buy the
new books . writers have to depends on the publisher company and make sure they have a lot of promote
functoins before book publish.â
[quote=âformosaâ]I emailed a friend who works in a Kingstone Bookstore in Taichung (Taizhong) and she replied, re HOW BOOKS ARE SOLD in Taiwan:
âHow to say that
there is one way that you can ask a publisher
to have book put on the recommend books for
the bookstore , of course the bublisher have to
give bookstore for some promote fee .
and one way is let the bookstores to hve books recommend on their website and people will buy it , for another words still have to let the websites get some benefit I guess.
There is no much power for bookstores staff ,
we canât purchase new books by ourself , we have
purchase department in Taipei, they buy books and we sell it until the second turns we can buy the
new books . writers have to depends on the publisher company and make sure they have a lot of promote
functoins before book publish.â[/quote]
Thanks F,
Everythingâs a lot clearer now.
Alleycat, thatâs naughty, even without the rolling eyes thingy. Heâs doing his best, after all, so the least we should do is give him some encouragement.
How to sell a book, courtesy of the one-and-only: âwe have
purchase department in Taipei, they buy books and we sell it.â