Re: where to buy books

[Peter Kent <techwr -at- ARUNDEL -dot- COM>]

> At 08:33 AM 6/11/97 -0600, Peter Kent wrote:
>>> royalties are stepped -- rate 1 for books purchased by
>>> the small stores at standard price, rate 1/x for books purchased
>>> by big chains at a deep discount. Most of the books
>>> sold -- at least on our royalty statements -- are sold to the
>>> big chains.

Actually I didn't say the above, though maybe I was quoting it in a message
of mine.

> This is true to a certain extent, although 'most' is an exaggeration. If
> the drop in rate is significant, you've been had.  As an aside, they
> should
> also be stepped the other way. (No, 'standard contracts' never include
> this. You have to ask, but it was never denied, in my experience). That
> is,
> if more than xx copies are sold, the rate goes up 1%, past yy, another
> .5%
> etc.

Quite right, but that's related to the number of books sold, not to the
discounts. The rates may go 8%, 10%, 12%, 15%, for instance.

>>I said that an author's cut is dependent on the discount at which the
>>book
>>was sold; the deeper the discount, the less the author earns, and with
>>very
>>deep discounts the author's earnings begin to drop dramatically.

> Your agent has not done a very good job. Royalty rates should be
> calculated
> (and you can almost always negotiate this) on the 'suggested' retail
> price.

No, this is not correct for the computer-book business. Virtually all
computer-book royalties are paid as a percentage of net, not the list price.
It's very rare for a computer-book to pay based on list price. I realize,
however, that trade books are typically paid on list price, but that's
really a different business.

> As Eric noted, such suggested prices are often stepped, but the steps
> should not be THAT deep.

Once you're over a 60% discount, rates will typically drop by half; instead
of getting 10% of the net, you'll get 5% of the net for example (and of
course the net is lower, too).

>>this in its contract: "xxx will not pay royalties on copies of the work
>>that
>>xxx sells or disposes of at or below bound cost; e.g., the sum of
>>printing,
>>paper, binding, packing, and transport." (That's a typical clause; all
>>contracts have something similar to this.) Remaindered books are
>>generally
>>sold at or below bound cost--they're just clearing out stock--so the
>>author
>>will generally get nothing from the sale.

>>From an agent's point of view, I'll tell you this:  first of all,
>>anything
> and everything is negotiable.

You'll often hear agents say this, but there are certain realities they have
to work within, and one of those realities is that you won't get a publisher
to pay you royalties on remaindered books. Okay, maybe you will if you're
Stephen King (but even then I doubt it). If the publisher is virtually
giving the book away, making less than the book costs to print, there's no
way you're going to convince them to pay you a royalty!

>BUT, we used to have a saying: If you are getting
> royalties, we haven't done our job. If it actually comes down to
> royalties,
> if you've earned out your advance, then you need to renegotiate a bigger
> advance on the next book. If you consistently earn out and are relying on
> the trickle down of royalties, it's time to find yourself a new agent.

This is unrealistic in the computer-book business (I assume Ginna worked in
trade, not computer books). Even top computer-book authors still get
relatively small advances. Books that make the author $200,000 in royalties,
and which are expected to make that sort of money, may only earn a $10,000
or $20,000 advance. In "the old days" advances of $50,000 were not uncommon,
and even some $1m advances were paid. But these days advances are not based
on the expected earnings of the book.

BTW, just for a little background:
* I've written 30 computer books.
* I've had three or four best sellers (depending on what you want to call a
best seller, of course): The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Internet, Using
Netscape, Discover Windows NT Workstation, and The Official Netscape
JavaScript Book.
* I've worked with a dozen or so publishers.
* I use Waterside Productions, the world's largest and most experienced
computer-book agency (they've signed 5,000 computer books).

The computer-book business is very different from trade books, and some
things may look bad from the perspective of a trade-book agent. However,
there's a flip side; computer-book writing is generally much more profitable
than trade-book writing, so even though you may get an advance that's a
smaller proportion of the projected royalties, for instance, those royalties
will probably be much, much larger than if you'd been writing a trade book!

Peter Kent

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