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Book contract

Started by centurion, September 03, 2024, 10:37:39 AM

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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.
I know it's a genus.

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.
It's terrible writing, used to obfuscate the fact that the authors actually have nothing to say.

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.
Funeral by funeral, the academy advances

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.