  Mystery
This week: Publishing: Copies Sold & Money Made Edited by: Jeff  
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan
Mystery Trivia of the Week: If the name J. Michael Straczynski isn't familiar to you, perhaps you've heard of his work. His many, many works include three horror novels, two compilations of short stories, a children's stage play, a book on screenwriting, more than 500 articles for various Los Angeles publications such as the LA Times, 120+ issues of more than a dozen different comic book series, several feature-length screenplays, and 200+ episodes of various television series including 92 of the 110 total episodes of Babylon 5 (a show he also created). Lest you think he's all about quantity over quality, the man has also won two Hugo Awards, a Visions of the Future Award, the Ray Bradbury Award, an Eisner Award, an Eagle Award, an Inkpot Award, and a Christopher Award, not to mention his nominations for three additional Eisner Awards, a BAFTA, a Bram Stoker Award, a WGA Award, and a Cable Ace Award. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that he's only 58, and has accomplished all of this over the course of a 40-year career. If you were to equally distribute his body of work across his career, he has created, on average, one complete new work in some form of media every three weeks - without fail - for the past four decades. 
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PUBLISHING: COPIES SOLD & MONEY MADE
How writers get paid and figuring how many copies of your book sold can be a source of great confusion for writers. The process is very complex, varies from publisher to publisher, and can even be influenced by the desirability of the work, the prominence of the author, and a dozen other factors. The purpose of this editorial is to give a basic overview of how copies are sold and money is made when you have your work published through a traditional publisher who distributes copies of your book to bookstores and retailers for sale. Standard caveat/disclaimer: please keep in mind that this is very general information and you should never enter into a contract for your work without having a professional attorney and/or agent advise you... but for anyone who's interested in how the money and sales typically work for most writers in the publishing industry, please read on:
Two Ways to Get Paid
When a writer cashes a check, it's usually for one of two things: either an advance or a royalty. An advance is a flat amount that the publisher pays you before anything is sold, as guaranteed compensation against a certain amount of expected success for the book. A royalty, on the other hand, is a certain percentage of a book's price that is paid for every copy sold. Generally speaking, the lower the advance, the less successful they anticipate the book will be. Since an advance is basically a publisher gambling that they'll make that money back when they start selling books, a lower advance number is common for unestablished or less successful authors, while the huge newsworthy advances are usually reserved for those established and even famous authors who are very likely to have their work become a bestseller and translate into hundreds of thousands, if not millions of copies sold.
Advances
An advance is money you shouldn't have to give back, as long as you abide by all the terms of your contract. Publishers can demand the return of an advance if, for example, you never turn in the manuscript, refuse to comply with their editing or publication standards, or something like that. They cannot demand the return of an advance as a result of poor book sales. Advances are often paid out in up to three steps: one-third paid upon signing the contract, one-third paid upon delivery and acceptance of the manuscript, and one-third payable on publication. For example, a publisher may offer a first-time novelist a $9,000 advance for his or her manuscript, which would translate into $3,000 when the contract is signed, $3,000 after the final manuscript is turned in (and accepted) by the publisher, and the final $3,000 once the book is actually published.
Royalties
Royalties are calculated based on a fixed amount per book set by the publisher and usually based on the rate at which they sell the book to retailers. (They're not calculated on the amount each retailer chooses to sell the book for.) For each one of those copies that the publisher sells, the author gets a negotiated percentage of that copy. Keep in mind that publisher's often deeply discount their books when selling in bulk to retailers, so even though you walk into a Barnes & Noble and see the price of a hardcover is $26.95, chances are the publisher sold it to the retailer for about half that. Thus, if you have a royalty of 10%, you're making about $1.35 per book (10% of half of $26.95). Royalties are typically paid out quarterly or biannually, can vary widely (anywhere from 7.5% to 15% isn't unheard of), and can even be on a sliding scale (e.g. starting off at a certain percentage and then increasing after a certain number of copies are sold).
Calculating the Number of Copies Sold
Any talk of royalties would be remiss if it didn't mention how sold copies of the book are calculated. It's important to note that many publishers accept returns of unsold books and refund money to the retailers. So even if your initial print run is 10,000 books, retailers aren't going to keep twenty copies of your book on the shelf forever; they're going to return all but a few copies (if they keep any at all). In reality, even if your initial print run in 10,000 copies, if sales tank and you only end up selling 1,000 copies, you might have retailers returning 8,000 of the unsold copies to the publisher. Those books do not count toward your royalties, so you're actually getting royalties on 2,000 copies instead of 10,000 copies.
Processing all of that information together, let's look at a common type of scenario. You submit your novel to a publisher who likes it enough to want to publish it. They offer you a $12,000 advance and plan a first print run of 20,000 copies. Let's pretend the book sells okay, and after the retailers have returned their unsold copies, you have net sales of about 10,000 copies. What that looks like to your bank account is $4,000 when you signed the contract, $4,000 when you turned in your final manuscript that the publisher accepted, and $4,000 when the book is published. The publisher sold the book in bulk to retailers for $14.00 per copy, which means your royalty is $1.40 multiplied by the 10,000 copies that sold. So add up your $12,000 advance, plus the $14,000 you made in royalties, and you're looking at a grand total of $26,000 that you've made from that book.
All of this is not meant to be discouraging, but rather to simply show how the publishing process works. It's always an exciting thing when an author gets something published (especially when you can walk into a store and buy it!), and hopefully all of us will find the kind of success where we're dealing with royalties on hundreds of thousands or millions of copies of our work sold. But it's also important for writers to be realistic about what they can expect for their work. Getting published is only the first step along a path to financial success as an author. There are a lot of steps along the way (publishers' acceptance of your manuscript, dealing with returns of unsold copies and how they factor into your royalty payments) that many writers may not be familiar with. Hopefully this article has shed a little light on the process so that if you are ever fortunate enough to have a publisher want to put copies of your book on shelves at Barnes & Noble, you'll be prepared and know what to expect from the process.
And just so this isn't a completely somber newsletter, let's look for a moment at the sweet smell of success. Not including advances, and making all kinds of gross generalizations like the royalties being 10%, the publisher selling the books for $14 each, etc., then once you become an established author with a following or write something that really catches hold, your financial outlook is pretty good! Based on this week's Publishers Weekly numbers, Nora Roberts has made about $75,000 so far from her latest J.D. Robb novel (Delusions in Death); Michael Chabon has made about $50,000 to date from Telegraph Avenue; Lee Child and Mitch Albom are in the $180,000 range for their respective latest works; and Mercedes Lackey is looking at about $4,700 from the first week's sales on Redoubt. 
It is possible to succeed and make a living as a writer. But the road is a longer one than many writers might think; knowing what to expect from the journey can help manage expectations and get authors focused on setting realistic expectations for themselves. Those of us who want to be published aren't just writers; we're also businesspeople. We have a brand (us!) and a product (our books!), and we owe it to ourselves to understand how the various facets of our business work.
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following mystery items:
The moon, full and round, was large that evening. Large enough to cast an iridescent and illuminating light over the dew covered grass beneath the balcony. It shone over the lake, its mirror image reflected back, shimmering a slight yellow on the murky, black surface. The water rippled; the wind creating small waves and white-horses on the bank where the ducks nested.
A beautiful morning with bright sunshine just like any other morning in doctor Harsh’s dining room. I often had my breakfast at Harsh’s place. It wasn’t because he is a good conversational partner or because I admired him for his work to hunt aliens and flying saucer sightings. The breakfast is always free and plentiful. Everything seemed perfect until detective Valdo showed up. Valdo would only come to Harsh’s home when he needed immediate help with one of his cases.
Time comes to each of us; ever-changing, it follows each of us to the doorway of eternity.
For most, eternity is an endless scream, for the rest of us
it is the sound of music indescribable, that will never end.
After a hard day of work and like every day here I am, in a bar I barely know after five in the afternoon. Just relaxing, today looking at the people around me. I’m trying to forget my bad luck and yes, I am trying to get drunk and live my life forgetting all my worries and keep on. Having one glass of scotch, for now, just a sweet alcoholic drive straight to forgetville. You know how it is, right? A job that you don’t like, an ex-wife that does not let you see the kids because the child support is late. Same old stuff of an an ordinary man who has made some bad decisions. I am here, just wanting to know where all went wrong and wondering if tomorrow is going to be any different.
I couldn’t sleep the night before the day everything went wrong. It was a humid August night around midnight. I sat up; darkness was all I could see. The only light was the glow of the alarm clock beside my bed. By this time it was already 2:00am. I felt a cold drip of sweat or water fall to my chest. At the same time it felt like drool. I couldn’t tell which it was. An extremely dizzying sensation came over me and I was down. I passed out or was knocked out but I woke up with a smile on my face for some odd reason.
She panted heavily as she sprinted as fast as she could through the foliage. Her face was scratched and cut as low hanging branches and twigs scraped her skin, but she didn’t care. Suddenly, she heard a twig snap behind her and whipping her head around she looked behind her. The area was pitch black making it impossible to see anything. She bit her lip and raised her cam-recorder to her face and pressed the record button.
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Feedback from my last newsletter about mystery spots:
Quick-Quill  writes, "One Day I want to write a book set at Rose Hall Jamaica. That place has always fascinated me. I agree with Tessa and your response for the same reasons.I write like a movie"
Rose Hall is a fascinating place as well. I admit I don't know very much about the subject, but you can't go wrong with big old houses!
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  writes, "Be sure to have Scooby Snax."
Always a necessity when solving mysteries.
DB Cooper  writes, "I have followed the Bermuda Triangle Mystery for years and I believe the answer has to do with Methane Hydrate."
Yes, that's become a very popular theory in recent years. It's definitely one of the more plausible explanations for the mysterious stuff that happens over there! 
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Mystery: October 24, 2012 Issue [#5332]
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