Benefits to write a book.

[cr_skyworks]

I was told that in USA, even the sale price for each book is above $100, the author only get a few dollars for each one. Is that true? I just can not believe that the publisher makes too much profit.

 

[flatulent]

The general average is 5% to the author. The real benefit to the author is advertising of the author's skills. This will result in an academic promotion or more consulting clients or higher wages from an employer.

I once talked with a famous academic about this. He was already the top rank professor. He said that the royalties divided by the time spent was lower than that earned by low end manual labourers. He wrote the book for the fun of it and to benefit the students.


The real profits are in high volume books such as those written by Agatha Christie.

 

[vfone]

Better example than Agatha Christie is J.K Rowling.

J.K. Rowling profit vs work was 1000 : 1

…or in other words: doesn’t matter what you write in the book, important is to sell it…just kidding

 

[psmon]

The publisher advertises the book.. if the book can't sell, the publisher absorbs the cost of the printing.. so they grab much profit

 

[flatulent]

The publisher is taking a very large risk unless the author is famous. Famous authors can get 10% royalties.

 

[cr_skyworks]

The publisher doesn't do that much work for printing a book since the author has written the book in word or pdf file. The cost is quite low for printing a book nowadays. I believe the author doesn't receive a reasonable portion of the royalties.

 

[madengr]

In this age of self-published music I don't see why one could not self publish a book. You can order low-volume, soft cover books online straight from digital files. I guess the association with the publishers name gives it sort of a "peer reviewed" status which in reality is not the case. I had several profs that had there own text books, some of which were just spiral bound. The content was excellent.