Last week I ran across a fascinating blog entry called “The Reality of a Times Bestseller”. It was posted by author Lynn Viehl and includes a very detailed rundown - including her first royalty statement - for her novel Twilight Fall, published by Onyx. The book was released in July of 2008 and landed on the New York Times mass market bestseller list at #19.

The post is a great example of the kind of radical transparency that can make blogging very interesting. For instance, Viehl relates that she received a $50,000 advance for the book, had a print run of 88,500 and initially shipped 69,000 copies, earning her $40,484 in royalties, of which $13,512.69 was held in reserve, meaning that she still had a little over $22,000 left unearned from her advance on the first statement. That reserve figure is actually a bit high, as it comes out to about 33%, but it’s not over the top, as 25% is pretty much standard for most books.

Lynn goes on to describe her reasoning for making the post as:

In Publishing telling the truth about earnings smashes the illusions publishers and writers want you to believe and, like breaking mirrors, it never brings you good luck. Thing is, when I was a rookie I wanted to know exactly what it took to have a top twenty Times bestselling novel, because that was such a big deal to writers. Everyone I asked gave me a different answer, told me a bunch of nonsense, or couldn’t/wouldn’t tell me at all. For that reason I want you to see the hard figures, and know the reality, and the next time someone asks you what it takes, you can tell them the truth.

There’s something admirable in the idea of opening up your royalty statement like that for other authors - especially new authors - to view, but I think there are other lessons to be learned from Lynn’s post as well.

First: format matters. As what publishing people call “genre” fiction, Twilight Fall was released as a mass market paperback. That means it had a low price point ($7.99) and a quick check of her royalty statement shows that she earned a royalty rate of 8% of the retail price, which is pretty standard for mass market. The challenge there is that with the low rate and the low price point, Lynn only earned about 64 cents per book sold. That’s actually a little less than an author would receive per book when writing a for Dummies title, for instance.

Now let’s contrast that with a book being released in hardcover. What are called “standard” royalties for a book released in hard cover are 10% (of the retail price) on the first 5,000 copies sold; 12.5% on the next 5,000 copies sold; and 15% on all copies sold thereafter. If we assume a relatively average hard cover price of $24.95, by the time the author gets to the 15% plateau (which Lynn’s blew past easily) the author is making $3.74 per book sold. So on those same 74,893 copies sold, Lynn would have made a whopping $270,930.80 if the book were published in hard cover. Of course, one could argue that she would’ve sold far fewer copies in hard cover, but it wouldn’t have taken many (about 13,400 copies total) to surpass what she actually earned on the book. Even if she had only managed to sell 25,000 in hard cover, she would’ve generated more than $84,000 in royalties and received a decent check. Then the book could be released in either trade or mass market paperback a year or so after the hard cover release and create another bump in sales, ultimately earning far more in royalties for her over time.

Of course, it’s the publisher who chooses what format makes the most sense for a particular book, but as an author you can influence that by the kind of book you’re writing, who you work with as your publisher, how the book is pitched from the outset, etc., and as you can see, format can have a powerful impact on an author’s earnings.

Second: longevity matters. A quick look at Lynn’s Amazon ranking shows that it’s down around 25,000, which means that sales have dropped off substantially since the book was first released last Summer. It’s always tricky to estimate sales based on Amazon’s ranking (in fact, it’s really just a guess), but I’d say that a consistent ranking of 25,000 or so would have the book selling only a couple hundred copies a month via Amazon, which likely accounts for about 40% of sales. So even though Lynn’s book had a terrific sell-in and a very strong initial push, which she pointed out landed her at #19 on the NYT mass market bestseller list, if you really want to do well you need to find a way to continue getting the word out about the book, reach new readers, and keep the book selling. That brings me to my third point…

Third: promotion matters. How do you keep a book going beyond that initial sales push? You promote it. And when I say “you” I mean the author. In her post, Lynn says:

I do very little in the way of promotions for my books; for this one I gave away some ARCs, sent some author copies to readers and reviewers, and that was about it. I haven’t attended any conference since 2003. To my knowledge there was no marketing campaign for this book; I was never informed of what the publisher was going to do for it (as a high midlist author I probably don’t rate a marketing campaign yet.)

That’s a scary thing for any agent - or any publisher for that matter - to read. I know some authors just don’t feel as comfortable getting out and talking to readers, trying to get on shows, doing radio interviews, etc., but my advice to anyone trying to develop a career as a writer is this: get comfortable doing it. The reality is that unless your book is a runaway bestseller, your publisher (and the person at the publisher assigned as your publicity contact) has plenty of new titles coming out all the time and will move onto other things. For them your book is one of many they’ll work on in a given year, but as the author you have far more of your life (your time, your future, etc.) invested in each book you write. So learn how to develop a strong promotional platform for yourself as a writer, whether that’s through blogging, a website that allows readers to talk to one another about your books, or by considering working with a publicist to help get you on some shows, generate some interviews, etc., because without the author working hard to promote the book, not much is ultimately going to happen beyond that initial push.

In Lynn’s case, readers clearly respond to her writing. Otherwise, there’s just no way you ship that many books. But with the big drop off in sales as evidenced by the Amazon ranking, you can see that her existing readership has essentially been tapped. Lynn describes herself at one point in the post as a “high mid-list” author who probably doesn’t rate a promotional campaign. That’s a shame to hear and if I were working with Lynn I would certainly encourage her to be much more active in working with her publisher to promote the book, and to engage with them earlier in the process to see what they have planned, try to push them to do more, etc. I’ve found that for authors who are doing a great deal, publishers are willing to do more themselves, as well. But when an author doesn’t invest themselves in the promotion of a book, the publisher often doesn’t either.

Anyway, thanks again to Lynn for writing a post like this. It takes courage to expose yourself, but I agree with her idea that more information is better and I certainly think there’s a great deal to learn from her post.