Book contract

[centurion]

Hello,

one of the big academic publishers asked me to write a book proposal, which I did, and they liked it, so they now sent me a book contract. So I am excited.

The contract looks ok, but there are two things I am not sure about. First, the royalties for hardcopies are 8% (which seems ok), but for electronic versions only 0%. Second, they do not say how they will distribute and advertise the book, other than ``as appropriate".

The second item is actually more important.

The book will be partly textbook, partly research monograph, so it may sell a few thousand copies.

I did all the searches related to this, on stack exchange etc, so I have some ideas, but still any input/help  would be really  appreciated.

Thank you

[Parasaurolophus]

A lot of publishers these days mostly leave "marketing" in the author's hands. So that's not very surprising. But you could talk to your editor about the distribution plans.

0% for electronic copies sounds awfully weird to me.

[spork]

This is a good explanation of the economics of the traditional publishing industry:

https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books.

Publishers don't do marketing anymore.

Don't know anything about customary royalty rates for digital editions.

[Ruralguy]

I get 10% (of actual sale price, not list) on hardcopies and 5% on electronic.
Its a non-academic press, but does some publishing for academics.

0 on electronic sounds like they plan on giving you 0 for your troubles by only selling
electronic copies.

Then again, you don't really get rich on academic books anyway (still...).

[secundem_artem]

The only person getting rich in the academic book market is the printer.

I'm not in a book field, but was part of a group that came up with a practice model that was of interest for a few years to be used as a textbook.  Our publisher was a national professional practice organization for our discipline so maybe not a traditional academic publisher.

In our case, we got 10% royalties against the advance on the book - which I think was about $2500.  Once the advance had been worked off, royalties went to 13%.  This was before e-books were a thing.  This meant a check for a few hundred twice a year for a year or two. Since we had 5 authors, any individual royalty check was pretty modest. After a couple of years, the second hand market over-took the new book market, sales crashed, royalties crashed, and the publisher started pushing for a 2nd edition.  We got as far as a 3rd edition before the topic had more or less run its course and now it's out of print.

0% for electronic sounds like a great opportunity for the publisher to sell books and not pay you for them.  Sweet deal if it ain't you.

[Sun_Worshiper]

0% is criminal. You should push back against that. Advertising is probably a nonstarter though - seems to fall on the authors these days.