Researching I've found you get about 1.50$ per 25$ hardcover of your book sold! That's insane. Music industry with albums is worse. How can YOU make the ACTUAL PRODUCT and yet get 10%?!
Answers (2)
"Typically, an author can expect to receive the following royalties:
Hardback edition: 10% of the retail price on the first 5,000 copies; 12.5% for the next 5,000 copies sold, then 15% for all further copies sold.
Paperback: 8% of retail price on the first 150,000 copies sold, then 10% thereafter.
So few people are willing to pay for books that there just isn't a lot of money to be shared. Little golden Books originally sold for 25 cents, and a father had to earn 25 cents to have 25 cents to spend. Now they cost $3.50 and a father has to earn almost $7.00 to have $3.50 to spend. So a lot of the profits go to taxation.
And everybody has a book in them (that's what the writers keep telling me), so yours has to be very good to get an audience at all. If you search "Little Free Library" on Facebook, you will find an association of about 60,000 people who give books away. They are able to get most of them for free. Authors just have to find jobs to support themselves.
Music is a little better because performers get their money by personal appearances. Most of the royalty goes to the composer.
Thank you for the detailed response, that was insightful! So what your saying is royalties are so low cause not much money to be made? Mmm that still doesn't answer WHY. Why 10%?! ... the book publisher gets 90%?!? They printed it, okay. I WROTE IT. Makes no sense to me
Because it costs more to sell a book than to write it. The world needs peddlers, not inventors.
Thank you for answering back such details :) Yeah I've done some research i've seen those numbers, but my question is WHY? like... it seems so monopolized, is it normal so no one questions it? are thought it'd be like 70%