More on that Ebook thing*


Someone commented to me that my $11.41 royalty on sales of nearly 40,000 "units" was really an example of a terrible contract.

They're right, but the truth is that the ebook clause in that contract is probably the best most authors can negotiate - I (and my coauthor) get fully fifty percent of the $$ the publisher gets. The current standard, at least in many boilerplate contracts, is 25 percent, and there are some publishers that that push 15. (We're talking about net. Yeah, this stuff is a lot more complicated up close.)

The problem is that the publisher negotiated a bad deal. (There are reasons for that I won't go into here.) Suffice to say, $11.41 isn't going to pay my mortgage - or theirs either. The ebook sales on this book over its lifetime won't pay for coffee service there for a day.

But hey, there's always foreign sales. Like in Japan . . .

Seventy-three "units" sold in Japan during that period. (Hard cover, I believe, though no one seems able to get me a copy.) My cut?

$15.17.

Love that exchange rate.

* Go back a day or two for the original post. And an update or clarification - the figure only covered a 3-month period. The next 3 months saw another 39,903 "units" sold, for $16.42. Keep this up, and I may be able to buy a box of cigars . . .