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Royalty Rates for Book Publishers
The quotes presented below provide an overview of the royalty rates currently being offered to book authors in the United States.
Most American publishers are moving towards paying authors based on net sales and away from paying a royalty based on the list price of the book.
Trade book publishers often include a clause for a reserve for returns. For many publishers this reserve is a fixed percentage of sales. Some trade publisher book contracts have a reserve percentage that declines over time. For example: 25% in year one, 15% in year two and 0% during the following years.
1. Trade Books
"Generally speaking, hardcover books pay standard royalty rates of 10%, 12%, and 15% of the cover price --- 10% on the first 1 to 250,000 copies sold, 12% on the next 250,001 to 500,000 copies sold, and 15% on anything sold above 500,000 copies. So if an author's hardcover book has a cover price of $25.00, then the author will earn only a $2.50 royalty on every copy sold, up to 250,000 copies."
"Generally speaking, the standard royalty rates for paperback books vary from a low of 1% to a high of 10%, with the average royalty rate falling at 6%. So if an author's paperback book has a cover price of $6.50, then at a 6% royalty rate, the author will earn only a $.39 royalty on every copy sold."
Source: http://www.brandewyne.com/writingtips/authorspaid.html
The royalty is specified in your contract and varies by publisher, but a common royalty rate is 10% for hardcover sales and 6%-8% for paperback. Traditionally, publishers paid the royalty on the actual retail price, but more publishers are moving to paying royalties on the net price, or the amount they actually receive from bookstores (stores purchase books from publishers at a 30%-50% discount). Though getting paid on retail versus net price is generally not negotiable, you can sometimes get a slightly higher royalty if you ask.
Source: http://www.fictionfactor.com/children/getpaid.html
Considering how popular dinosaur books are with the book-buying public, my research leads me to the conclusion that, on average, the advances and royalties offered to authors and author/illustrators of books about dinosaurs lag behind industry standards, (even compared to so-called “genre” literature such as science fiction.) Advances against royalties have been offered as low as $1,500. with royalties offered as low as 5% of net price. (Net price is the amount of money the publisher gets.)
2. Professional Books
"Actually, royalties are paid on the net amount received, which is different from the wholesale price. If we sell a book directly to the customer (no middleman), at a conference or on the Web, the net could be equal or close to the full list price. ... [Addison-Wesley] Professional discounts [to bookstores from list price] generally are between 32% and 37%. Trade book discounts are more like 50%. "
"For non-"work for hire" authors for mainstream publishers (e.g., Addison Wesley, Prentice Hall, O'Reilly, Microsoft Press), I get the impression that most new-author royalty rates for US sales are the range of 10%-18%" of net income, not list price!
"The US rate is typically the basis for other royalty rates, notably foreign sales. In my experience, the rate for foreign sales is usually about half the rate for US sales."
"The US royalty rate may be tiered, e.g., X% for the first n copies sold and Y% for all copies sold after that. X, n, and Y are all negotiable. There may be more than two tiers.......When looking at these tiers, note that you typically move from tier n to tier n+1 based only on US sales."
3. Royalty Rates for the Review and Herald Publishing - a denominational publisher
"Royalty rates are set by denominational policy at 12 percent of the wholesale cost of the book for soft cover, or 14 percent for hardcover. After your book sells 15,000 copies, the royalty goes up to 16 percent. Rates are less for certain high-volume items such as devotionals and textbooks.
Royalty checks are sent out once a year-at the end of February."Source: http://www.reviewandherald.org/services/guidelines.asp
4. Survey of Royalty Rates for Romance Book Publishers
Here is an excellent survey by Brenda Hiatt on the royalty rates paid by publishers of romance novels. Note that all of these rates are based on the cover price of the book unless otherwise noted. Below is a sampling of the rates mentioned in Brenda's survey;
Avalon 10% Avon/Harper Collins 8% Bantam Dell 8% Harlequin Historical 6% Leisure/Dorchester 4% - 6% St. Martin's Press 8% Silhouette Romance 6% Warner 8%
5. Computer Books
"Royalty rates range from 10 to 20 percent of the book's net receipts (which are roughly half of the list price.)"
Source: http://www.adlerbooks.com/booksneed.html
"8. We will pay you a royalty of 10% of all net income we receive as a result of our distribution of the book, in any form, printed, electronic, or other, or from the license or sale to third parties of any rights in a derivative work. For translated editions published by O’Reilly’s own subsidiaries, we will pay a royalty of 5% of net income. 9. If we include all or part of your book in another book that we publish, you will receive a pro-rata share of the royalties from that book in the proportion that the number of words used from your book bears to the whole book."
Source: http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/ch03.html#royadv