Authors, royalties, publishing, and e-books?

[bbailey861]

It should be noted that the reason authors get smaller royalties on tie-in books than on original novels is because the publisher also has to pay royalties to the licensor, which means any royalties get split between the author and the copyright holder. Same slice of the pie, but cut into smaller slices to serve more people.

For example: Let's say a publisher is offering a 8% percent royalty on paperback copies. On an original novel, the author would get the whole 8% (provided the book earned out), but on a tie-in novel that 8% would be divided between the author and the licensor--with the licensor typically getting the lion's share because it's their characters and universe after all. So the writer might get 2% and the licensor would get 6%, adding up to the same 8%.

I had no idea that, with a tie-in piece of work, the compensation would be so low. If I was on a game show and had to guess, my figure would have been much higher. 2% hardly seems like anything at all when you consider you are probably spending months and months working on a novel.

^Well, the rationale is that the licensors are the ones who actually own the property, and the royalties are how they make a profit from licensing it. From a legal standpoint, they're the "author" of the work, and we're their subcontractors. So they get the lion's share of the royalties and we get a cut as compensation for our efforts.

It's actually a lot harder to earn out an advance on a tie-in, because the royalty percentage is so low. But the compensation is that the advances are relatively large.

They would have to be to make it worth your while, I would think. Otherwise, you would probably need to find other work in order to make a decent living. I certainly hope that the print runs are high.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, as we've been saying, the bulk of our income is from advances, not later royalties.

 

[Greg Cox]

^Well, as we've been saying, the bulk of our income is from advances, not later royalties.

Exactly. For some reason, this discussion keeps focusing on royalties, which aren't what pay the bills. In most cases, the royalties are a nice little bonus once in a while, but they're not what you live on.

It's like asking a plumber or an electrician how much he makes in tips. That's not really how they're paid for their labor. Same with tie-in writers. We're basically hired contractors who get paid up front for our efforts.

Don't get me wrong. You want that 2% royalty if you can get it, on the off chance that you luck out and end up writing the novelization of TITANIC or something. But it's a lottery ticket, not a regular source of income.

And look at it from the licensors's POV: You're using their universe, their characters, their logos and trademarks and so on to basically cash in on the popularity of their creation. Why wouldn't they expect to get a big slice of the profits?

 

[Relayer1]

How long, on average, does it take to write a standard length Trek novel ?

To the best of your knowledge, what's the quickest it's been done ?

 

[David Mack]

I know Peter David once wrote a Star Trek novel in 10 days. The fastest I've ever written a full length (80k+ words) Star Trek novel was 8 weeks. On average, I prefer to have 10-12 weeks for an 80k-word novel. But output often adjusts to fit the time available to finish the job.

 

[Relayer1]

I know Peter David once wrote a Star Trek novel in 10 days.

Wow.

No sleeping then...

 

[KRAD]

How long, on average, does it take to write a standard length Trek novel ?

To the best of your knowledge, what's the quickest it's been done ?

I generally prefer to have two months to write a full-length novel. The fastest I've written a Trek novel is three weeks.

 

[Greg Cox]

I prefer two or three months, but I can do a book in a month if I have to.

Of course, that means I have no life for that month . . . .

 

[JoeZhang]

On a tangent - I've been researching self-published kindle authors, the economics are different - some are knocking out a minimum of four books a month* plus short-stories - often they have three or four names on the go at once.

Don't worry about the quality feel the volume...



* Which I believe is common in romance novels written to a pre-determined formula.

 

[Etoile]

On a tangent - I've been researching self-published kindle authors, the economics are different - some are knocking out a minimum of four books a month* plus short-stories - often they have three or four names on the go at once.

Don't worry about the quality feel the volume...



* Which I believe is common in romance novels written to a pre-determined formula.

A steaming pile of crap is still a steaming pile of crap, no matter how large it is.

 

[SicOne]

Thanks, folks, for the information. It's been quite an education. Glad to see that e-books are working out for the authors. Prior to your comments, I had thought it more of a bonanza for the publishers than for you guys.

Glad to also hear that the publishers are honest with you and share the figures with you, or have websites to allow you to track them. In this day and age, I was somewhat cynical that you'd be permitted to see the "actual" figures and that someone on the publisher side might be fudging the numbers, as well as them using the growing popularity of e-books in some manner to reduce your royalties and bottom line while expanding theirs. As a union man, technology is cutting into our bottom line somewhat, so I could envision it doing likewise to yours.

That does bring up the question of why they'd keep numbers of Trek books sold as a secret. I recognize that they're not all New York Times best-sellers, but it seems they sell quite handily enough to keep this Trek Lit ball rolling, so why keep it a secret? As a reader and layman, I don't get it. And I would be interested in seeing how Trek book sales stack up against Star Wars book sales, out of curiosity.

Thanks for explaining the royalty structure and how it works, as well as "earning out". I had just assumed you were given a flat advance covering up to, say, 50,000 copies sold, then a percentage of the profits from, say, 50,001 on up. As a layman, I didn't know how it worked. Or that anyone had to play good cop/bad cop with a publisher...

Thanks for the percentage figures regarding tie-in royalties vs original work royalties. I didn't know the figures were so low, for either type. But if e-books contribute equally with printed books towards your bottom line, then it's all good. I had been thinking that the pay structure was different, leaning more in favor of the publisher, but clearly it's not.

 

[Paul Weaver]

In general, and let me make it clear that I'm NOT talking about Pocket Books or STAR TREK here, you do need to go back and amend the original contract because, yes, an older contract may not cover ebooks at all. Speaking as an editor, I've had to handle this more than once.

Often it's in the author's best interests to amend the contract to include ebooks because, hey, more royalties from an old book, but this does need to be hashed out with the author and/or agent before you can release an electronic version of an old book.

I couldn't get eugenics wars part 1 on kindle, only part 2, very strange, and the first book in about 60 books I read in dead tree format.

I've noticed several typos in older books too, do older books exist in electronic format, or do they have to be OCRed into a computer?

P.s I really don't see the point in pirating e-books, they're so easy to get legally. TV shows, sure, films too to an extent, but as books get released globally at the same time I don't see why people would pirate them.

 

[tomswift2002]

I've noticed several typos in older books too, do older books exist in electronic format, or do they have to be OCRed into a computer?

I remember reading a while ago a quote from Margaret Wanderer Bonnano about how her original version of "Probe" was typed up on computer, saved to 3.5-inch floppy, and printed out with the print out then being sent to the publisher. And with books from the 60's through to the late-80's I wouldn't be surprised if the manuscripts were typed up on typewriter's, so I would even have to wonder if the manuscript's still exist or if the manuscript's have been thrown out, any copies would need to be sourced from the printed books. So the older books probably have to be re typed or scanned into a computer.

 

[Greg Cox]

I know that all my early Trek books were written in WordPerfect. Don't know if that makes a difference.

My various editors finally put their foot down a few years ago and insisted I switch to Word.

 

[Relayer1]

I really don't see the point in pirating e-books, they're so easy to get legally.

There are always going to be people who simply don't want to pay.

There are also probably a lot of people with extensive collections of paper books that would like to load them onto an e-reader and don't see why they should have to pay again for books they already have.

 

[Christopher]

There are also probably a lot of people with extensive collections of paper books that would like to load them onto an e-reader and don't see why they should have to pay again for books they already have.

If only there were a way to do that legally. But it'd be hard to prove to the system that you already owned the print books in question.

I'd love to have my whole Trek novel collection in electronic form so I could easily search for content. To some extent, Google Books and Amazon's Search Inside can help with that, but they're cumbersome and not always comprehensive.

 

[Relayer1]

There are also probably a lot of people with extensive collections of paper books that would like to load them onto an e-reader and don't see why they should have to pay again for books they already have.

If only there were a way to do that legally. But it'd be hard to prove to the system that you already owned the print books in question.

I'd love to have my whole Trek novel collection in electronic form so I could easily search for content. To some extent, Google Books and Amazon's Search Inside can help with that, but they're cumbersome and not always comprehensive.

Amazon UK do let you download mp3's of the tracks when you buy CD's. I presume Amazon U.S. do too.

I'm sure I've read somewhere that they're planning to extend the idea to books - I don't know if they'd extend that to all the books you've already purchased...

 

[Etoile]

I'm sure I've read somewhere that they're planning to extend the idea to books - I don't know if they'd extend that to all the books you've already purchased...

Amazon US has something close for certain titles - they'll give you a discount on the electronic version when you buy the paper version from them. Doesn't apply to books you've purchased from them previously, as far as I know, and it isn't free, but they're taking baby steps.

 

[tomswift2002]

I know that all my early Trek books were written in WordPerfect. Don't know if that makes a difference.

But did you send your editors hard copy printouts and a 3.5-inch floppy copy back in the 90's, or was it on a CD-R?

 

[KRAD]

^ I never turned anything in on a CD, nor did authors turn things to me on CD back then. It was always on 3.5" disks, and always accompanied by a full printout. It wasn't until the turn of the millennium that e-mail became standard, at least in my experience.