Publishing a book brings together an emotion of satisfaction, a sense of achievement and a pinch of confusion. You want to know the royalty on every book sold and more specifically the exact amount you will earn. But the information you have isn’t satisfying your curiosity. Additionally, you need more information to understand the cost to find out your profit when a book gets sold.

Prowess Publishing follows an author-centric book publishing model, and we address authors’ doubts with clarity. So, how much exactly can you make by publishing your book with Prowess? Well, it depends on multiple factors, such as the selling platform of the book like Amazon or Flipkart, the version of the book (print or eBook) and the print cost.

Before we begin, let’s understand how royalties are calculated. Then we’ll explore why royalty payments vary from publisher to publisher and finally discuss how much sales revenue you should expect to receive after you publish your book.

Understanding royalty calculation

Profit on a book is the amount after you reduce print cost and distribution cost from the MRP. From the profit, you receive a share already agreed upon between you and your publisher. It may vary from 50% to 90%.   eBook royalties are typically higher as print costs get eliminated. Print, on the other hand, has the additional cost of, inventory management, which publishers must incur to deliver the book to readers. As a result, the percentage of royalty will be lower when compared to eBooks.

Why royalty varies from publisher to publisher?

Royalty varies from one company to another, depending on company policy and the costs involved. Additionally, the amount you receive is subject to other expenses like print cost, charges of distributor and inventory management as discussed earlier. Some companies will offer you a royalty of 50% on profit, while some may provide you with 100% royalty on every copy sold.

Should you choose a publisher who pays 100% royalty?

If publisher (A) offers you 100% royalty and publisher (B) offers you only 50% royalty what should you do?

That brings us to the next stage of the discussion – should you choose a publisher with highest royalty?

Obviously, as an author you want to receive the maximum amount of royalty from every copy of your book sold. Well, the choice is entirely yours. However, what you must do before making the decision is go through every aspect of the book creation, distribution and marketing services of each publisher. It’s always wise to choose a company, who works hard on promoting your book, creates an author brand, and offers you less royalty compared to a publisher who offers 100% royalty and puts zero effort in promoting or distributing your book.

How much royalty should you expect?

While it’s difficult to put an exact figure on every book sold, your share of profit will vary between 50 and 90%. At Prowess, we encourage authors to understand the marketing efforts your publisher puts in to make your book visible to potential readers. Once you build a brand, you will reap the rewards of your marketing efforts.

So, how much can you really earn by publishing a book?

We have seen many authors recover their initial investment in just a couple of months and make profit afterward. Expecting millions of copies to be sold in a month though is not a guarantee. The hard truth is your book’s sales depend on several important factors like the story, marketing campaign on different social media channels, price of book and your author brand.

We have tried to make things clear related to author royalty. In case you need more information on this topic you can reach out to us at info@prowesspub.com or call on +91849792483 our publishing consultants would be happy to answer all your queries.

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