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Comment by ivansavz | Hacker News Reader

Could you tell us, roughly, how the royalties work with Wrox publishing? How many copies did the book sell for $12,000 to come your way?

From what I have heard about traditional publishers, the royalties to the author are on the order of 5%, 10% of list price, which is not very interesting.

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From personal experience [1] I can tell you that's the range.

I don't think that making lots of money is a very good reason to write a book - or if that is your reason, you're likely to be disappointed.

A better reason is that it's great resume material: it can be a springboard to getting recognition and open doors that you probably wouldn't enjoy otherwise.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Isapi-Chris-Wuestefeld/dp/15620...

I couldn't agree more. The effort involved means the hourly rate is fairly dismal. But right or wrong it immediately establishes you as an expert and certainly stands out on a resume.

This is a great (=true) answer, but doesn't it basically argue that Copyright is a false premise? The evidence seems to be that (1) 90% of the money does not go to the author; and (2) In spite of (1) it still makes sense to do what it takes to publish. Logically, one infers that a copyright monopoly is fairly replaced by something with 10% of the social cost, provided that "springboard to getting recognition and open doors" effect is neutral. Is this lattr assumption only possible through copyright? What if there was something like an Award or &tc stamped your resume?

It says nothing of the validity of copyright, but it says a lot about the importance of distribution and marketing.

On Leanpub, the author gets 90% royalties minus 50 cents per copy. So, on a $10 book, the author gets $8.50 (85%) royalty, and on a $20 book, the author gets $17.50 (87.5%).

Just because publishers have historically paid 10% royalties does not mean it has to be that way in the future.

So, questions of copyright should be a debate about what is fair based on a range of arrangements. Personally, I'm in favour of 14 year copyright, not the "author's death + 70 years" madness that exists now...

Sorry I can't get my hands on the sales volumes easily anymore. For us the royalties ranged from 5% and 15% depending on various conditions. For example:

- 12% from standard sales in the US and Canada,

- 5% from standard sales elsewhere,

- 5% from sales of the work at discounts of 56% or more,

- 10% from sales in electronic form,

- 15% from sales to book clubs, etc.

If you're curious, I shared all the numbers I could on a book I wrote for Apress several years ago (Beginning Ruby): http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/

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