firecat

(Also another test of dreamwidth crossposting feature)

From a comment posted in James Nicoll's LJ here.

What I want to know is whether authors are getting more royalties due to there being no way to pass DRM'd e-books on to additional readers the way you can pass on a paper book.

I have my doubts, but if it turned out to be true I would consider getting one of the e-book readers.

(I'm buying as few books as possible because I have absolutely no space left in my house for books. The ones that don't come off my to-read shelf, I get from the library.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

firecat

For subsidiary rights often you don't get reimbursed per unit sold; the rights are sold for a lump sum and you get a percentage.

For hardcovers you usually get more than for softcovers; and you get a bit less for the first N copies than for the subsequent N copies.

On our book, we got the same rate for e-books as for trade paperback, but they aren't counted together; the first N copies of each are at the lower rate.

I don't know how the contract for our book compares to typical contracts for other kinds of books, or contracts negotiated through different agents, or without the help of one's publishing professional friends. (You know who you are.)

From:

epi-lj.livejournal.com

That's pretty interesting. I always assumed that authors got x per unit sold (and had kind of supposed that there might be, like there is in music, a value y up to which you were indebted in some way such that you only started getting x per unit sold when the accumulated balance exceeded y, but I didn't know if that was true or not).

From:

firecat

Yes, I left out the part about the advance on royalties.

From:

wild-irises.livejournal.com

Not exactly correct. Subrights are generally sold on a royalty basis, but if there's any advance at all, the advance looks like a lump sum and if it doesn't earn out, that's all you see.

E-books aren't generally subrights, though, they're generally produced by the publisher.