Only 1% or 2% of manuscripts submitted to traditional publishers see their way to print, says Portsmouth author J. Dennis Robinson, five of whose books are pictured.
No criticism here. I don’t know how a dishwasher or a cellphone works. What everyone should know, however, is that the industry has turned upside down in the last decade. Digital and print-on-demand (POD) technology has flipped the income equation for writers like me.
I know dozens of local book authors. Only two, myself included, write books for a living. The rest are writers with other income sources. That’s smart. A survey by the Authors Guild found full-time book writers bring in about $20,000 per year. According to Ziprecruiter.com, a Manchester, NH-based freelance writer likely earns from $7.45 to $32.93 per hour. The national hourly average is $23 with no benefits or job security — if you can find the work.
Five traditional publishers now dominate the market:
Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and MacMillan. According to some estimates, 98% of traditional publishing profits come from the top 1% of their authors.
It’s a numbers game. Traditional publishing works great for bestselling genre writers. More books mean greater upfront advance payments, more marketing, book tours, film rights and higher royalties. That’s how JK Rowling became the first billionaire author. But there is exactly one JK Rowling. Stephen King, according to Forbes, is worth half that.
Only 1% or 2% of manuscripts submitted to traditional publishers see their way into print. I went that route once with a true crime book. My New York City agent had me rewrite the all-important proposal 10 times before he submitted it to a small New York City publisher.
I received a $3,000 advance, half up front, the balance almost two years later. If I wanted an index, my editor explained, the publisher would deduct $2,500 from my advance. I opted to create the index myself, then designed the cover, got the reviews and did the marketing.
A typical traditionally published book sells about 3,000 copies. My royalty for a $25 hardcover came to 40 cents per copy and almost $2 for the e-book version. The author has to “earn back” the advance before that 40-cent royalty kicks in. The literary agency takes 15% of that. I sold the audiobook rights for $1,500. The agency kept half.
And those were the good old days. A popular regional publisher recently greenlighted my proposal for a history biography with a $1,500 advance. No deal. I passed.
Portsmouth author J. Dennis Robinson, a frequent contributor to New Hampshire Magazine (a sister publication of NH Business Review), has written 20 history books. Robinson has turned to independent publishing to retain more of the book’s profits and uses print-on-demand services to control his inventory. (Courtesy of J. Dennis Robinson)
But it’s not the publisher’s fault. The biggest bite of any print book comes from the retailer. Brick-and-mortar bookstores require at least a 40% discount from the sticker price. They need it to survive. Printing eats up another 25% to 30%. A distributor, usually Ingram or Baker & Taylor, may charge another 15%.
Do the math. That leaves the publisher, who is taking all the risk, with as little as 10% of the cover price per sale. That chunk has to fund not only the author but also the illustrations, cover design, layout, editing, proofreading, storage, marketing and more. Even at 3,000 copies, the publisher is just scraping by. If my book sold 10,000 copies, a literary agent said, the publisher might return my email suggesting future projects. If it sold 100,000 copies, the publisher would call me.
We used to rely on the offset press. These precise, costly mechanical marvels are ideal for printing high-quality books in quantity. The more you print, the cheaper the unit price. The estimate for one of my gorgeous hardcover history books, for example, came in at $20 per book for 500 copies, $12 per unit for 2,000, and $10 for 5,000, plus a hefty shipping fee. It’s a lot to pay up front for a garage full of copies.
The same book printed digitally in paperback came to $20 for one copy and the same for every copy thereafter. There are any number of POD vendors. I used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), a subsidiary of Amazon.com. My latest manuscript was approved and available for sale within hours of uploading the PDF file. Two days later, the first copy was on my doorstep, while the traditionally printed version took four months.
You probably have a digital printer connected to your computer. Compare the amazing color output today to the slow, crude, dot-matrix unit of decades past. Now imagine a giant modern version that can spit out an entire book in seconds, then trim the paper, add the cover, bind and ship it the same day. It took years, but the latest POD book is surprisingly close to the offset version.
And now the downside. Indie authors who elect to self-publish must do all the work, from editing and page design to sales and marketing. There are dizzying learning curves to master. But we get paid a slice of the pie chart for each task we tackle. Instead of 40 cents for a traditionally published true crime book, my latest $25 history paperback brings in $11 from Amazon, $10 from bookstores that buy copies from me, or twice that if you purchase directly from the author.
Recent print-on-demand books by New Hampshire writer/publisher J. Dennis Robinson include fiction, nonfiction and a graphic history. While traditional publishers often pay authors as little as 2% of the retail price, Robinson says indie authors can earn 40% to 50% with digital self-published books of equal quality while retaining copyright and artistic control of their work. (Courtesy of J. Dennis Robinson)
Say what you will about Jeff Bezos, but he’s been kind to me. He markets, prints and ships my books. While traditional publishers send a royalty check twice per year, Jeff pays monthly by direct deposit. Author copies ordered usually arrive in 10 days. We can monitor our sales by the hour through an online dashboard.
Amazon publishes an estimated 7,500 new digital books daily versus 11,000 from all U.S. publishers combined. While traditionally published books are highly curated, “indie” books range from incredible to garbage. KDP limits authors to uploading no more than three books per day and attempts to weed out AI-generated works. Warning: Most self-published books sell fewer than 50 copies.
Amazon also dominates with 70% of the e-book market.
Alice K. Boatwright, a longtime NH writer now living near Seattle, sold 2,200 paperbacks and e-books in the last year. But her award-winning Ellie Kent mysteries earn even more through Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s “lending library.” Subscribers can download as many as 20 e-books at a time.
Authors are paid by the number of digital pages read. For Boatwright, that was an additional 1.9 million pages last year, equivalent to 74% of her digital income. No trees were required, and even the pixels were returned.
Tom Raffio sees POD as an exciting new way to educate and inspire readers without the need for a traditional publisher. The president and CEO of Northeast Delta Dental, Raffio produced three business books before, including “Stories from the Starting Line,” co-written with his wife, Ellen, with freelance book author and editor Erika Alison Cohen. The Raffios, both avid racers, share interviews with runners, from those who win marathons to joggers pushing strollers.
“Another cool thing,” Raffio says of print-on-demand, “is you can update. We created a new edition of my running book and gave Amazon the new file. Now everyone who buys online instantly gets the new version.”
It’s a brave new world for indie authors. We can own our work, get paid, and create books that never go out of print.
