Royalties, A New Teaching Year, and Book Updates
The best news of the day is that I got my first royalty statement, which covers from the time the book released in March 2019 until the end of June 2019. And in that time, I was fortunate enough to “earn out” my advance, which means that my share of the book sales, which ranges from 15% to 50% depending on the kind of book, totaled out to more than the advance the publisher paid me.*
The publisher then takes the amount of my original advance out of that, and I get what’s left. Now, the publisher is permitted by contract to keep a little back as a hedge against future returns. Mine didn’t do that this time, but it’s possible they could in future. So I get the full amount of [Total Royalties Earned - Advance]. Even though we’re not talking about earth-shattering amounts of money here, I’m excited, because I never thought I’d sell out even my modest advance so quickly. At lunch today, I took a quick glance at the Amazon page for Book 1, reflected on the fact I’ve now made money on it over and above the advance, and did a little dance in my seat. Former students can have fun imagining that.
Meanwhile, back on the day job front, most of my classes are pretty good this year. Once of them is a bit on the “We’re not going to participate in class” side, which is always annoying, but it’s early days; I’ll break through their fear eventually. My first and second periods are excellent classes to start the day with, which is always a plus. Third period is good, fourth is the reluctant class, and fifth ends the day on an up-note.
Finally, updates: The Widening Gyre is still doing its thing in the world, and The Blood-Dimmed Tide revisions were just sent off to the editor today. The book had about 2500 more words added in revision, but it also had some removed, so I’m not exactly sure what the final wordcount will be—when I’m revising, I don’t erase words (they just get marked as “delete” in Word’s “Track Changes” mode, and my editor does the actual deletion when he accepts the changes), so the wordcount goes up but not down.
In any case, soon enough I’ll get the proofs, read the book yet again and find any problems (and hopefully miss fewer than we all missed in the first book!), and then it’ll be ARC time again, and then the book will release in February 2020.
I’m still a little fish in the author pond, but you know what? It’s a big pond, and the water is nice. Come join us!
*By the way, because of the variance in price between different models, 15% of the paperback cost is just about the same thing as 50% of the ebook price or 20% of the hardcover price. So, at the end of the day, no version of the book is better for my royalties; buy what you want on your shelf/in your device.