May 4, 2012 ・ Opinion

Big news in the eBook industry

You may have noticed that there is a lot going on in the eBook industry lately.

For one, back in April, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a suit against Apple and five of the top U.S. publishing houses for what they term “colluding to set eBook prices and sales models”. This was in response to an agreement formed between Apple and those 5 publishers to set eBook prices as per what is known as “the agency model”. This enabled the publishers to set their prices at the level they wanted to set, and dictate to the eBook

August 31, 2011 ・ Writing

How Do Authors Get Paid?

In the traditional publishing model authors can get paid in two ways, either a flat fee (a onetime lump sum) or on a percentage, or royalty, of each book sold. Then there is the increasing popularity of self-publishing. Here we’ll outline the differences.

When working with a publisher each contract will vary but there are common practices in the industry. Typically royalties for hardcover books are about 10% while 6%-8% can be expected for paperback. A new trend emerging is for publishers to pay authors based on net rather than the retail price of the book. A