How to get published. Your questions answered.
Is it easy to get a book published? Yes! All you have to do first is write an amazing book. Do that, then we'll talk... (Or just skip this whole article, self-publish it today, and take your place in a store selling millions of books in every imaginable niche.)
How much money does a book like Microadventures make? I don't really know, is the truthful answer! It's not as easy as you'd imagine to calculate how many books you have sold, plus I am hopeless at reading royalty statements or paying the slightest jot of attention to money so long as I've got some in my pocket and there's food on the table. But lest that sounds evasive, I received an advance of £16,000 for the book (I think!). That means I got £4000 on signing the contract, £4000 on submitting the manuscript, £4000 on publication, and £4000 at some other point which I can't remember!
If that sounds like a lot of money (and I spanked a few grand of it on my writing shed, so I did feel pretty fancy) remember that it took me over a year to write and involved me travelling thousands of miles on trains, cars and ferries, buying lots of camping and photography equipment etc. Be aware also that an advance is no more than a loan: I would not earn another penny from the book until I had earned out my advance from sales. Luckily the book sold well and I was soon earning royalties. I have zero idea how many copies it sold in the first few years (I've asked my publisher and agent for numbers but haven't had an answer), but I was earning royalties fairly swiftly. Most books never manage that.
After that, for as long as the book remains in print, I'll receive 10% of sales (minus the 15% cut my agent gets for negotiating the deal. More on agents later. The longer a book remains in print the more massive the agent's slice feels to me!)
[A quick aside here: I think these figures are broadly standard. Be very aware when signing with an agent or a publisher that they know far more about contracts than you do. I've been stung by a publisher for just 2.5% of a book for the dumb reason that I was so excited to get published and didn't care about money and thought contracts were too boring to read (I still stand by that final point). I've also been stung by an agent's commission which riled me as unfair for years. But it was, of course, too late by then. Seek out help from savvy people before signing contracts!]
Sales of the book are inevitably declining over time (though only a little bit, plus they get a boost every time I write a new book - a strong reason for doing new books is to increase sales of my old books), but I still get about £5000 a year from Microadventures six years after publishing it. The longer the book stays relevant, the greater the overall earning from the book will be. Potentially I will earn something from the book every year for the rest of my life, plus for 70 years after my death. Books are very much a long tail, slow burn form of passive income.
And lest you doubt my inability to understand the maths of books, here's a section of a recent royalty statement. It makes very little sense to me!
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