Lies, Damned Lies, And Royalty Statements. WOW! My Sales Figures! I know you want to look.
on April 21st, 2011About a year-and-a-half ago, I found a discrepancy in the accounting on one of my book royalty statements which showed the publisher had not calculated my income correctly on a major book.
I reported the discrepancy, and it took the client over six months to forward the shortage, which was about $2,000. EDIT: Yes, it was an HONEST mistake. They agreed with me within ONE hour of my pointing it out. I don’t believe they were trying to rip me off. However…
Since then, royalty statements at the company have been revised. It is no longer possible to find the mistake I found with the new accounting system the company uses.
Just sayin’.
Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch has an excellent working writer blog, and there are two posts you must read about some major discrepancies she found in her ebook sales statements. This is very important information.
How many e-books did the traditional publisher say I sold? 30. That’s right. 30.
When the novellas, which had worse sales rankings from Amazon, sold 300 each.
That 30 number didn’t pass the sniff test for me. So I talked with other writers who have books in the same genre with the same company. The writers I talked with also had some e-book savvy.
These writers compared the sales of their self-published e-book titles to the sales of their traditionally published e-book titles, and found startling discrepancies. Even adjusting for price differences (Big Six e-books were priced higher than the self-published books), these writers discovered that their Big Six publishers reported e-book sales of one-tenth to one-one-hundredth of their indie-published titles.
FYI: Amazon doesn’t tell what your sales are. They only show your sales ranking in relation to how you sold on Amazon on that particular day.
You can get into the top 100,000 by just selling 2 or 3 books in a single day on Amazon, and you can be bumped down to the 1,000,000 mark by only selling one book on Amazon that week. You may be selling lots of books elsewhere, but on Amazon, that won’t show.
When I wrote an article about book piracy some months ago, a few folks rushed to Amazon to see the sales rankings on my books, stopped at A Distant Soil rankings, and looked no further. Why, who’d pirate her book! Her work doesn’t sell anyway! Look at her Amazon ranking!
I have about 2 dozen books on my backlist from which I derive royalty income. Looking at the Amazon sales ranking of only one of my books as some kind of objective measure of my entire backlist is dumb. Assuming only one of my books (this one) gets pirated is dumber. Since the majority of my sales via libraries and comic book shops wouldn’t show up on Amazon anyway, making much ado about my sales ranking on one of those books (a book which has sold $3,000,000 at retail, BTW) by noting the Amazon ranking as the sole measure, is amateur night analysis.
Yesterday’s Amazon rank for A Distant Soil Volume I was 335,000. The Amazon rank for Spider-man: Back in Black was 379,000. Therefore, A Distant Soil sells better than Spider-Man.
See how dumb that is?
More FYI: Bookscan is a service which tracks sales, but only covers about 50-75% of those sales. It covers NO digital sales, no mail order, no sales of books which don’t subscribe to the service. I track my Bookscan sales every single week. EDIT: FYI, these are book sales, not periodical sales. So, these are graphic novel numbers, not pamphlet comics.
It may surprise you to hear that one of my most solid backlist titles is Girl To Grrrl Manga. It certainly surprised me.
Here is an honest to gosharootie screen shot of eight weeks of my Bookscan backlist, with combined totals for my royalty-producing titles.
No, I will not give you any more specifics than this. I don’t think that would be fair to my clients.
As you can see from this graph, little me, the lowly creator of A Distant Soil who clearly doesn’t sell anything because I am such a loser for whining about illegal downloads, actually moves between 350 and 450 books EVERY SINGLE WEEK, via Bookscan alone. If you add in that extra lot that Bookscan doesn’t cover (25-50% more via other resources,) that’s a whole lotta books. EDIT: I haven’t had a new, original graphic novel out in years BTW. Very much looking forward to seeing what happens when my new GN’s are released, starting this fall.
Naturally, I do not get as big a cut from every sale as I do when I sell direct here on my website. Some of these books pay a pittance. Some of them have yet to earn out the advance. Others pay more than a pittance.
One creator who got a load of chirpy publicity from pirate – I mean, tech – websites, went on to rave about the big blip in his sales, which, it turned out, were only a couple dozen copies. If your baseline is zero, then any increase is a huge blip, I guess.
After literally millions of page views on articles about the “huge blip,” he went on to sell 150 copies on his website.
As you can see, 150 copies is, for me, a really bad week. More economy of scale reality check for you. Not to knock anyone else, or how they toot their horn, but what other people consider a step up is, in my universe, sinking into a black hole of suck. JK Rowling would probably weep buckets if her sales ever got to my level. Other people would think they died and went to heaven.
Online exposure does not necessarily translate to fame or sales. Just ask Huffpo bloggers.
As musician Rick Carnes once said, “People die of exposure.”
Here’s what works for me:
The combo of website sales, and big publisher support – the digital and traditional publishing combo, with authorized online publication of my work so people come directly to my site. That’s the ticket.
And it’s working better and better, thanks to the great readers who support the artist. YOU! Thanks to YOU, I grow flowers and make books, and make pictures! Whee!
A few years ago, the horizon looked bleak. Now, it’s shiny and sparkly. I think I see a unicorn!
Something else to think about: many of these self publishing services are de facto publishers. Don’t assume a major traditional publisher will rip you off on your sales accounting, and a Print on Demand service won’t.
Just sayin’.
Keep digging… there’s got to be a unicorn in there somewhere…
It seems that Ms. Rowling is wise to sit and wait before releasing e-book editions of her novels.
I am curious what the different colors mean on your sales chart… but respect the confidentiality if it’s nunna.
On a side note, as I peruse your sales at work… why wasn’t “Mascot” released in paperback? Or is Harper Collins pushing the possible sales of the out-of-print hardcover to the e-book edition instead of a paperback?
I am curious how your work-for-hire comics are selling as digital comics, but again, if it’s nunna my bizness…
Thanks for sharing! (And I’m glad your how-to book is selling! I can’t wait to see all the cool comics inspired by your book!)
Well, I’ll be first in line when Harry Potter is released as an ebook, and I’d love to have the audio for my Ipod.
OK the different color bars: depends. They represent books or a block of books which sell the best.
Most books on my backlist are solid. It’s unusual to have books which sell on and on. Most are dead as a doornail in just a few years. I’ve got a body of work that keeps moving. Which is what every author wants.
Then there’s the handful of anthologies that are absolutely moribund. Everything else sells respectably, and a few things sell really well. But this material just doesn’t move. Publishers who say anthologies don’t sell: they are not kidding. I know there are exceptions out there, but as a rule, they just die. At least I can’t take it personally, because there are other people in those things.
Now, I’m sure lots of people assume I’m getting huge bucks for all of these, but there’s a wide range of contracts. These books represent more than 20 years of work. So some pay well, and others don’t. If I got $1 per copy, and sold 1,000 copies per week (which would be a really good week,) I’d still not be rich. And I do not get $1 per copy.
“Mascot” was released in paperback. I have some!
I have not seen any info on my WFH digital sales. I’m not sure much, if any, of my WFH material has been released digitally yet.
Funny thing about the how-to book: “Girl to Grrl” sold a very respectable five figures. Quite happy about it.
But “Manga Pro Superstar,” the sequel, did not do as well. It’s actually a much better book. Have no idea what happened there.
What will be really interesting is to see where these numbers will be in one year when I have a couple of original graphic novels out again.
“Girl to Grrl” is much more catchy title. Sometimes that’s what it takes for someone to take a second look.
Interesting information on the royalty sales figures. I didn’t know it was that bad.
Some books don’t pay page rates, but royalties alone. So, an artist who needs to make a living needs to sell a whole hell of a lot of books to make a decent yearly income.
Assume you have a graphic novel that sells 10,000 copies, which would make most small press people keel over with delight. You might get $1 per copy. If it took you a year to do the book, you are not doing well at all.
If you accumulate a body of work as I have, you can supplement that income with your backlist. If your backlist can bring in an extra $15,000 per year in royalties, you can start to make ends meet.
But most artists never reach that point.
Whenever I see some guy on the internet whining about “creator privilege,” he’s whining about creators getting royalty checks for 30 books and 300 books.
You’ve got people marching in Wisconsin to preserve generous back end state benefits for workers, but when an artist wants to make some back end money off a fair and honest sale for goods, this is called “privilege”.
Even with my body of work, my royalty income is not huge, but consider many of my books are collections or collaborations. So, I would not be getting much per copy.
BTW, I’ve left a few of my books off my chart. I only list books that I want to keep an eye on.
Since I have a backlist, and decent income on new work from publishers, I’m in a good position right now. But every freelancer knows how unsteady that is.
A few years ago, I reached the point where my royalty income was solid enough to pay my base expenses, but that income dropped precipitously the next couple of years. My income on my website took a shot up in August last year, which has made a big difference.
It’s extremely important for every creator to maximize a variety of income streams. And I don’t mean getting a day job that keeps you from making art. I know there are people who “didn’t get their dream job, either,” who think this philosophy is just more “creator privilege,” but I see no “privilege” in honest pay for an honest sale.
Strange about that Mascot paperback… I can’t find a listing in Books In Print, Amazon/BN, WorldCat, or HarperCollins. Hardcover, library binding (laminated cover), e-book exist.
I haven’t compared “Grrl” to “Superstar”… maybe it’s because the first is about drawing, and the second is about producing. Hobby vs. Business.
On a related note, about “stuff I wish someone had told me twenty years ago”… “1,000 Ideas by 100 Manga Artists” ships in July. 100 manga artists were asked for ten practical tips for manga enthusiasts. Which makes me wonder if Graphic-Sha or someone has a doujinshi how-to book available?
Wow. Weird.
BTW, it’s now available on Kindle.
If it helps anyone at all, I used a link here on A Distant Soil and bought The Book of Lost Souls from Amazon.
Cool. Thanks. All this information is helpful.
Torsten, my apologies.
It turns out the PB “Mascots” are paperback preview copies, not released commercially.