Analyzing the Royalties
One of the many things my agent does for me is to take my royalties information from DAW and track it all in a nice, convenient spreadsheet. This allows me to better indulge my data fetish, examining trends and playing with numbers until my wife reminds me I’m supposed to be going grocery shopping instead of spending all afternoon on the computer.
Last week I received the spreadsheet for my royalties statement through June 30, 2010 — right before Red Hood’s Revenge came out.
This is my fifth royalties check from DAW. (They come out every six months.) As of June 30, I had five books in print, four of which had earned out their advances. I’m still waiting for the reserve against returns to go away on Mermaid, at which point I expect that one to start paying out as well.
To me, this royalty statement — particularly the graph I put together below — illustrates the importance of a backlist. You can see how the royalty checks have grown pretty steadily over the past three years as I’ve continued to write and publish books. This latest check will be about ten times what I got back in June of 2008 (point 1 on the graph below).
Some authors who get that bajillion-dollar advance for their first book. I’m not one of them. The slower but steady approach seems to be working for me though, at least so far.
Those books will eventually go out of print. But DAW is pretty good about keeping things in print for a while, so I’m hopeful this trend will continue.
Another interesting data point came when I compared print sales to electronic. I believe e-books are growing, and electronic sales are likely to take up a larger portion of overall sales. For the moment though … well, take a look at the breakdown of total sales per book:
I’ve had the best electronic sales with Stepsister Scheme (don’t ask me why). For that book, e-books make up about 4.3% of the total sales. I don’t really have enough data to say how much or how quickly those e-book sales seem to be growing. For now, while I definitely appreciate the extra royalties, they’re not yet a significant factor for me.
Another interesting point from that second graph: total sales of Stepsister are a little lower than sales of Goblin Quest. Likewise for Mermaid. This threw me for a second. After all, the weekly sales numbers for the princess books are great, so why are the goblin books selling better?
The answer is, the goblin books have been selling longer. Goblin Quest came out in November of 2006. Stepsister came out in January, 2009. Meaning in a year and a half, Stepsister Scheme has sold almost as many copies as Goblin Quest did in just under four.
And now it’s time to save this post and go get groceries. Questions and comments are welcome, as always.
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October 4, 2010 @ 10:16 am
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MichaelM
October 4, 2010 @ 10:34 am
That’s some excellent news, Jim. Think your third series’ll do better than the Princesses?
P.S. That reminds me, I need the Jig series.
Jim C. Hines
October 4, 2010 @ 10:38 am
I hope so! There are a few factors which I think might help it to take that next step up in terms of sales, but right now I’m still trying to get the synopses written. Sales projections are a long way off 🙂
Cy
October 4, 2010 @ 1:32 pm
That’s an interesting point you mentioned about DAW being good about keeping books in print for a while—do other SFF publishers not give your books a few years to reach a saturation point, etc, with the SFF readership?
zollmaniac
October 4, 2010 @ 1:54 pm
Your approach is what my mother always referred to as the “snowball effect.” Kept selling books and the more you sell, the more you get until you’ve got one giant snowball!
Or something along those lines. I think its a pretty good way of doing things if you ask me.
Jim C. Hines
October 4, 2010 @ 1:56 pm
I can’t give you hard data, but from talking to other writers, DAW keeps things in print a lot longer than most publishers. Which is great for me. There are other advantages to different publishers, but I really like the idea of being able to build a backlist, and having those books be available for a long time.
Jim C. Hines
October 4, 2010 @ 1:58 pm
That’s the goal 🙂 I’ve talked to other writers who describe “overnight success” as taking years. Often they end up publishing 8 or 10 or more books before things *really* start to take off.
In the meantime, I figure I’ll keep rolling that snowball until it gets too big for me to push, or else it crumbles and buries me in my own little miniature avalanche of books.
Tony
October 4, 2010 @ 2:13 pm
I am that little blue blip at the bottom of the big red bars. I really appreciate being able to get your books from Kindle to read on my iPad, rather than having to find yet more bookshelf space for my fiction habit. Keep ’em coming!
Jim C. Hines
October 4, 2010 @ 2:27 pm
Thanks, Tony. I appreciate all of my little blips, blue and red both 🙂
As far as I know, DAW plans to continue releasing the books electronically. So unless they dump me (nervous laugh here), the books both old and new should continue to be available on Kindle.
Jenna
October 6, 2010 @ 2:18 pm
Hi! Interesting post. DAW is one of the publishers I like more than others, so it’s good to hear that they back their authors for the longer haul.
I’m not surprised that your Kindle sales are so low – when I look at your Amazon listings, your Kindle version is only $1 less than the paperback price of $7.99. The paperbacks are not discounted through Amazon currently, but there are booksellers who buy wholesale and sell for cheap through Amazon – therefore there are some new and used copies of each of your books for $3-4 cheaper than your paperback list price. Also, when Borders routinely sends out 25-40% off coupons, the incentive is there price-wise to pick the book up in a store.
Honestly, this is something that really pisses Kindle owners off – a lot of them see only a dollar discounted from the “real” book price and see non-green behavior, price gouging, and lack of something they can turn in to a used bookstore all in one. So, they move on to another book. Considering how rabid a lot of Kindle owners are for their beloved e-readers, I’m going to suggest that Kindle owners may be interested in your books, but choose not to buy at all, rather than buying the book. I’m wondering if you aren’t losing readers as a result of the Kindle version’s price. I’d be interested to hear your take on that.
One suggestion: While I like the graph, labeling the units of the x and y axis would be very helpful. Yes, I did eventually figure out that the x-axis was “check #” and the y-axis was “$$ rec’d”, but the label would still be helpful! The segmented bars with a color per title does an excellent job of illustrating the point, though! 😀
Jim C. Hines
October 7, 2010 @ 8:35 am
Hi Jenna,
Yep, DAW is pretty darn good to their authors. Having talked to folks at other houses, I’m very happy to have ended up here 🙂
I know there’s a lot of back-and-forth over what e-books should cost right now. And sure, if they were cheaper, they’d sell more. Likewise, if the print books were cheaper, they’d also sell more.
The problem is, there are costs involved with both, and the physical cost of printing/paper/shipping isn’t the biggest part of the overall price of producing a book. I have no control over the price of the books, but I recognize that the publisher has to cover those expenses.
I could see releasing older or out-of-print works for a lot cheaper, because in those cases, the initial production costs have already been covered. But I don’t see that working as well for newer releases.
Guest Post: Experiments with E-books
December 27, 2010 @ 2:46 pm
[…] Earlier this year, I was studying my royalty statement from DAW, comparing my print and electronic sales. I’ve been hearing for years that print is dying and e-books are the future, so I was rather surprised to find that electronic sales made up only 3-5% of my overall book sales. […]