Royalties are the amount of money from each sale that is owed to the author or other stakeholder.  For example, if you sold a book at $10 dollars and had an agreement for 25% royalties, you would earn $2.50 per book sold.

A cash advance—when signing a publishing deal—is when the publishing company pays the author a non-refundable cash advance fee based on the projected performance of the book. These advances range dramatically based on author popularity, size of the book, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, and other factors (like if this is said author’s first book).

When the author accepts a cash advance, they forfeit the royalties from sales until the publishing company has "broken even." in other words, if you are supposed to receive 25% royalties but take a cash advance of $10,000 you would have to sell at least $40,000 worth of books before you received a royalties check.

Traditional publishing bases most of its payments on royalties—a defined percentage of every sale.  Which means that if a book is being sold at $10 and your royalty rate is 25%, then you will earn $2.50 per book sold.

You’ll possibly see 25% for eBooks, but most publishers offer 10-15% royalties based off of retail price.

And that’s only if the book sells. Many publishers focus on the books and spend their marketing budgets on a select few books each year that they anticipate will yield the largest returns.

The profit share model is based on the margins of the book sales. In other words, if that same $10 book costs $2.50 to print, the margin would be $7.50. Whatever your percentage of the profit share is, is what you would bring home per book. -30- Press offers up to a 60% profit share, which means you would bring home $4.50 per book profit if each book made $10 profit per sale. Which is 80% more than you would from a traditional publisher.

Each project varies, so $4.50 isn’t guaranteed, and most books cost more than $2.50 to print. So margins may be closer to $3 per book for each author, which is still higher than the industry standard.

How many copies of my book can I expect to sell?

The average book in the USA sells under 1000 copies over its lifetime, with some estimates placing that number closer to 200 or 300. This can range dramatically, but if you can sell 500 copies of a book within a year, then congratulations, you have beaten the average.

How well your book will do depends on a variety of factors. Marketing presence, cover design, and your audience, PR push, interviews, email lists—all of the things.

For example, if you are writing a niche book on mushroom cultivation for urban homesteaders, you may have no problem selling to your audience because it is so specific.

However, your audience is probably no more than a few thousand people nationwide, which does not leave you much room for growth.

Fortunately, here at -30- Press, we can help you monetize other services related to your book for additional income, especially if you are in a niche market.

-30- Press will provide editing, author development services, formatting, product pre-sale marketing, and product launch, steady-stream marketing once the book is live, as well as ISBN registration and copyright aid.

Additionally, we can assist with art and digital presence management.

No!

Our goal is to work directly with authors.

We are currently working with a variety of authors on a variety of projects.

These include children’s books, poetry, non-fiction, biographies, science fiction, horror, young adult fantasy, and satire projects.

Some of our authors have published previously with traditional publishing houses, and they didn’t enjoy the experience.

Others are first-time authors, and they need some mentorship through the process.

Some are successful authors who want more control over their experience but don’t want to take the full dive into self-publishing and managing all aspects of the process.

We love working with creatives on projects we believe in.