What I Learned by Self-Publishing: Royalties

Let’s get real about royalties. You did the majority of the work. You get very little of the money. Frustrating, I know.

If you go the ‘traditional’ publishing route (get an agent or go direct to a publisher), royalties for papaerback books (according to Authors Guild – please note that contracts can vary widely) are generally 7.5-8% of the list price (sometimes escalating to 10% after a specific number are sold). A book priced at $15.99 means a royalty of $1.20-$1.27 per printed book (and $1.60 upon escalation). For an eBook, royalties are generally 25%. An eBook priced at $9.99 means a royalty of two $2.50. (If you go through an agent, their fees come out of this portion. A typical agent fee is 15% – so your royalties for a print book would be $1.02-$1.09 and $1.36 upon escalation, as well as $2.13 for an ebook.)

If you self-publish, you will likely make the most money from your eBooks (and any print copies you can personally sell). There are many places you can publish an ebook (and each will have their own requirements, such as cover size and file type). I looked at three places – B&N Press, KDP, and IngramSpark:

	eBook Royalty %
B&N Press	70% (for books priced up to $199.99)
Amazon (priced 2.99-9.99)	70% – file delivery (ex. U.S. buyers = .15 MB, or around six cents) 35% in territories not listed here: Digital Book Prices (also if they price match with another retailer and the price falls below 2.99)
Amazon (priced .99-2.98 or 10.00 and up)	35%
Amazon KDP Select	70% (in all countries listed in above link, with the addition of Brazil, Japan, India, and Mexico) Paid per page read for Kindle Unlimited (based on size of fund based on memberships) NOTE: 90-day mandatory enrollment – automatically re-enrolled until you opt out (but can only do so at that 90-day mark); there are free marketing benefits – but you cannot sell your book or give it away for free anywhere else (including your own website)
IngramSpark	40% Ingram makes it REALLY difficult to find the royalty amount…? I saw in a couple places that it might be 50%. I can promise it’s not 70%, as is reported in several other places. When I was uploading, I considered the ebook, and the 40% stopped me in my tracks. But, of course, I can’t find where I saw that.

Royalties for an eBook priced at $9.99: 70% is $6.99; 40% is $3.99; 35% is $3.50. 

As you are trying to decide where to price your book and which royalty to pick – consider this:

            9.99 x 70% = 6.993 (KDP/Amazon gets 2.997)

            19.99 x 35% = 6.9965 (KDP/Amazon gets 12.9935)

If you self-publish a paperback, you again have many choices of where to do this. Below is info for the same three places. Prices will vary based on the size of the book and the number of pages, as well as if the interior will have color or not. Let’s assume a 350-page book, 8×5.25, cream or white 50 lb pages, BW interior – $15.99 price point: 

	Printing Cost	Author Royalty	Retail Distribution Author Royalty
B&N (has groundwood paper as an option in addition to white and cream) No fee to upload. Allows preorders – does not push to amazon.	$5.46	(Price point*55%)-printing cost = Royalty $15.99*55%=8.79  8.79-5.46=3.33  Royalty = $3.33	7.20 (45%) Your royalty remains at $3.33
KDP No fee to upload. Cannot have preorders on printed books.	$5.15	(Price point*60%)-printing cost = Royalty  $15.99*60%=9.59  9.59-5.15=4.45  Royalty = $4.45	You can opt into expanded distribution (if your book qualifies), but your royalty becomes $1.25
Ingram ($49 to upload; additional fees to upload new files*) Allows preorders – does push to Amazon and other online retailers.	$6.18	People don’t buy direct from Ingram – they would purchase from a distributor.  So it depends where they buy it from.	You can set different discounts for different territories.**

**You can set whether or not you allow retailers to return books, but please note that if you say no, it will reduce the likelihood they will buy copies. Also, you can set yes with two options – destroy (you are charged the wholesale cost) or mail (you are charged the wholesale cost plus two dollars to ship to you – they don’t guarantee the condition of the book). (NOTE: Retailers often require a 40% discount – this means setting your Ingram discount to 53-55% because Ingram will also take a piece of the pie.)

You can also purchase author copies from all of these places (print cost + shipping/handling/tax) and either sell them yourself or sell on consignment with local shops. Just note – the printing and shipping will come out of your 60%. (Note: For KDP, these author copies are not eligible for free Prime Shipping. Also, KDP won’t allow you to set your paperback to pre-order, so you can’t order author copies prior to your launch date.)

 IngramSpark specifically has a couple things that can change the cost of printing/shipping your book:

1. Printing Service – you can pay a little more to get your books printed sooner. (Economy – 5 business days; Express – 2 business days; Rush – 1 business day – though it does say “usually” before each one)
2. Shipping (Basic – which doesn’t have tracking, and then Commercial or Residential Ground, 2^nd Day, and Next Day; if you do not own a business, you will be paying for residential, which is, of course, the most expensive; if you use basic, and the shipment is lost, you’re out of luck – and the money)
3. Handling Fee ($1.99 for 1-50 books; jumps to 4.99 at 51 copies; it might jump again, but I didn’t look at any shipments over sixty books)
4. Tax

The more books you buy, generally the better off you are (but not always – such as a jump in printing cost from twenty-five to twenty-six copies or the jump in the handling fee at fifty-one). For the prices below, I checked the Economy printing (five days, though depending on how many you buy, it’s not too much more to bump that up) and Residential Ground (which is the cheapest shipping for a residential home that still has tracking – one book with basic shipping would be 13.21, but, again, you run the risk of it getting lost and having to rebuy it). Shipping becomes more economical the more copies you get. Remember that this is for a book priced at 15.99. (Taxes and shipping should be seen as estimates as they are specific to my state/location. This is just to give a general idea.)

*Cartons hold twenty books – if you get more than that, you’ll get multiple boxes.

If you buy one carton of twenty books and sell on a 60/40 consignment:

15.99 * 60% = 9.59

9.59 – 8.16 = 1.43 royalty per book

For my own book, I found the highest royalties possible in purchasing anywhere from 1-60 books was 50 books. The upfront cost for fifty copies is a lot – in the made-up scenario from above, it would be $394.99. You can play around with Ingram’s calculator before you begin to figure out what your own costs would be (as your page count and other choices would affect the cost).

If you are interested in hardcover:

350-page book, 8.5×5.5 (note size difference), cream or white 50 lb, BW interior, dust cover – $20 price point.

	Printing Cost	Author Royalty	Retail Distribution Author Royalty
B&N (has groundwood paper as an option in addition to white and cream)	10.79	If you sell direct (meaning to a person not a bookshop): Royalty = Price point – handling fee – printing cost – shipping – estimated tax For this scenario shipped to me, the total cost would be $18.36. Shipping here becomes a LOT more economical at five copies ($5.50 for one copy vs $7 for five copies – cost would be $13.05 per book at five copies, so $6.95 royalty per book).	Minimum price allowed is 21.58, which sets your royalty at 1.08
KDP No fee to upload. Cannot have preorders on printed books.	9.70	60%	Minimum price allowed is 16.17, which would result in 0.00 royalty. $20 price point would be 2.30
IngramSpark (Again, used to have an upload cost – they have since removed it)	12.25	People don’t buy direct from Ingram – they would purchase from a distributor.	You would have to set your price above 20 to break even. $21 would get you a whopping $.19 (But, again, you can set different discounts in different territories.)

Here’s a quick look comparison of the overall/breakdown costs. Please note that shipping and tax are based on my home state and will differ depending on where you live, as well as the final size/weight of your book (I’m continuing to use the paperback dimensions noted above for these estimates). (Cost is the total cost including printing, shipping, handling, and tax.)

# of copies	IngramSpark*	KDP/Amazon	B&N Press
1	Cost: 16.89 Shipping+: 9.69 Handling: 0.00 Tax: 0.88   Cost per: 16.89 Royalty per: -0.90	Cost: 9.22 Ship/Hand**: 3.59 Tax: .48   Cost per: 9.22 Royalty per: 6.77	Cost: 14.06 Shipping: 5.5 Handling: 1 Tax: .73   Cost per: 14.06 Royalty per: 1.93
5	Cost: 46.51 Shipping: 12.49 Handling: 0.00 Tax: 2.42   Cost per: 9.30 Royalty per: 6.69	Cost: 33.45 Ship/Hand: 5.95 Tax: 1.75   Cost per: 6.69 Royalty per: 9.3	Cost: 45 Shipping: 7.5 Handling: 1 Tax: 2.35   Cost per: 9 Royalty per: 6.99
10	Cost: 83.55 Shipping: 15.99 Handling: 0.00 Tax: 4.36   Cost per: 8.36 Royalty per: 7.64	Cost: 62.70 Ship/Hand: 8 Tax: 3.2   Cost per: 6.27 Royalty per: 9.72	Cost: 83.66 Shipping: 10 Handling: 1 Tax: 4.36   Cost per: 8.37 Royalty per: 7.62
20	Cost: 156.55 Shipping: 21.99 Handling: 0.00 Tax: 8.16   Cost per: 7.83 Royalty per: 8.16	Cost: 122.40 Ship/Hand: 13 Tax: 9.87   Cost per: 6.12 Royalty per: 9.87	Cost: 162.05 Shipping: 15 Handling: 2 Tax: 8.45   Cost per: 8.10 Royalty per: 7.89
30	Cost: 230.08 Shipping: 28.49 Handling: 0.00 Tax: 11.99   Cost per: 7.67 Royalty per: 8.32	Cost: 181.80 Ship/Hand: 18 Tax: 9.93   Cost per: 6.06 Royalty per: 9.93	Cost: 240.43 Shipping: 20 Handling: 3 Tax: 12.53   Cost per: 8.01 Royalty per: 7.98
40	Cost: 303.62 Shipping: 34.99 Handling: 0.00 Tax: 15.83   Cost per: 7.59 Royalty per: 8.40	Cost: 241.4 Ship/Hand: 23 Tax: 12.40   Cost per: 6.035 Royalty per: 9.955	Cost: 318.82 Shipping: 25 Handling: 4 Tax: 16.62   Cost per: 7.97 Royalty per: 8.02
50	Cost: 374.51 Shipping: 38.99 Handling: 0.00 Tax: 19.52   Cost per: 7.49 Royalty per: 8.50	Cost: 296 Ship/Hand: 23 Tax: 15.50   Cost per: 5.92 Royalty per: 10.07	Cost: 397.21 Shipping: 30 Handling: 5 Tax: 20.71   Cost per: 7.94 Royalty per: 8.05

+ On July 7, a week after making this post, IngramSpark sent out on email that they were ‘simplifying’ their shipping costs (so if you read this post prior to that, your eyes are not deceiving you – the numbers have changed). They also got rid of handling fees.

Standard Shipping
UPS Ground Commercial and Residential
Shipments are trackable
No handling fee
$8.99 per order PLUS

• $0.70 per book, up to 15 books
  $0.65 per book, 16-49 books
  $0.60 per book, 50 or more books

Basic Shipping 
Media Mail or comparable, delivered by USPS
Shipments are not trackable and are not insured
No handling fee

• 2.99 per order PLUS $0.50 per book, up to 25 books

I typically order 50 copies at a time (due to previous handling fee jump, the cost per book jumped at 51). These new prices mean that if I were to buy 50 copies, my total cost went down $28.61, and my royalty per book went up $.57.