Authors' Earnings In The UK

[JonH]

It's referring to median income, so it won't be skewed by Rowling. Professional means more than 50% of time spent earning is by writing.

More information can be found here (follow the link at the bottom):

Authors Report


The full 2007 report gives detailed methodology for this type of survey and can be found here:

http://www.alcs.co.uk/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?nodeguid=2004f4fa-54de-4aa3-9d4f-773e6aa112a1

 

[Venusian Broon]

I couldn't find if you guys had discussed these articles when they came out - so apologies if you have, but they add more numbers to the above survey:

Most writers earn less than £600 a year, survey reveals | Books | theguardian.com

Stop the press: half of self-published authors earn less than $500 | Books | theguardian.com

 

[JonH]

The ALCS survey suggests average ROI on self-publishing is 40%. I wonder how that compares with traditional publishing, which presumably still makes a profit.

 

[Mouse]

I would be absolutely ecstatic to earn 11k a year from writing. I hope I achieve that when my books are out! Romance is hot, right? I might actually be able to afford to live then.

 

[ctg]

Stop the press: half of self-published authors earn less than $500 | Books | theguardian.com

There's a clear link, he said, "between earnings and the amount of help, and therefore feedback, that an author is willing to take on board.

Authors who engage editors, for instance, end up with more royalties. Readers are excited by having access to new voices, but they've not been waiting for unedited, unproofread and amateurish books. There's more to being a successful author than finding the 'Save and publish' button on Amazon, but there are a lot of authors who haven't realised that yet. In that sense, the low earnings were not surprising."

That is the same thing we have observed in the chronicles, as many of the new comers doesn't make the bar in the critiques, but they improve considerably when they meet proper critique.

I recommend reading the article, as it gives a better view to the matter than what you have seen in the BBC, or other mainstream medias, as they do explain the numbers.

So what the 11 grand meant in reality was just a peak shot to the whole pile that churns through the publishing industry in the year, and I for one, cannot for a good reason believe that there's only 29 073 000 (29 million) pounds in the royalty pot.

English reading market is far, far larger than that. And while yes, the textbooks take awful lot from the whole cake - by their triple digit price tags, and mandatory buy rules - they aren't the whole cake.

Not by a far stretch.

Or am I wrong, and the whole market is really so awfully small that there's only really few who actually buy books. I mean we cannot count english reading market in the xx million range, can we?

 

[Venusian Broon]

So what the 11 grand meant in reality was just a peak shot to the whole pile that churns through the publishing industry in the year, and I for one, cannot for a good reason believe that there's only 29 073 000 (29 million) pounds in the royalty pot.

English reading market is far, far larger than that. And while yes, the textbooks take awful lot from the whole cake - by their triple digit price tags, and mandatory buy rules - they aren't the whole cake.

Not by a far stretch.

Or am I wrong, and the whole market is really so awfully small that there's only really few who actually buy books. I mean we cannot count english reading market in the xx million range, can we?

I calculated a rough 'how big is the US/UK market in 2013 for fiction books' from a huge number of sources, but my internet connection went AWOL and I lost the post. So I'm not going to do it again!

This is just a 'lick your finger and test the wind' sort of calculation.

The summary from memory was:

Fiction market US+UK (printed + e-books) came in about 3.3 billion GBP. (of that total fiction e-books is about 20% of that - but hey it's very rough)

Thus pick your figure from your preferred royalties.

10% gives you 330 million GBP for fiction authors in these markets
5% gives you 165 million GBP etc...

 

[Laeraneth]

The last I heard, non-fiction sells a ton more than fiction. And then with fiction, the genre makes a big difference. Romance sells more than SFF.

Well balls... count me in as a pure fiction and SFF (aspiring) writer ;P

I remain hopeful that it's skewed a lot by the burgeoning number of people considering themselves full time writers simply because it's so much easier to release/publish something now than it was even five years ago.

On the plus side, though it seems terribly cliché to say it, I don't write for the money (it would be hard to, I have made precisely nothing thus far, having never published anything ;P) but because I've wanted to since I was about fourteen. Now I'm at the stage in my life where I actually have the time/patience/experience/whatever to be able to do what I think is a half-decent job of it.

If it ends up becoming a nice supplement to my normal salary, that's just great.

If I hit the one in a thousand chance jackpot of actually being able to LIVE off of it? That would be amazing! (Then I could get a lot more written for a start)

 

[psikeyhackr]

Here is some good fiction about publishing in the UK. LOL

psik

 

[ralphkern]

A blunt instrument, if you wish to get a general idea of what a SP author is earning for a book on Amazon is to look at a book on there and you will see a number entitled:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank

Plug that number into:

http://kdpcalculator.com/index.php

It is a snap shot, however the data has been smoothed so it would likely give you a week or so's average of the amount of book sales they are selling.

Then its simply a case of multiplying their unit price by that number and multiplying it by 0.7 to knock off Amazon's commission to give you the gross that author is receiving.

Net is then obviously individual to that person but for the numerically low sales figures (circa 1000, which actually means higher sales) you would likely have to multiply by 0.6 as they would probably be pottering around not far from the high tax bracket.

Example:

One chap with a seller rank of 250(!!!!)

That means they're selling 100 - 300 books per day at $5.00 (average 200 x 7 = 1400 this week)

1400 x $5 = $7000

$7000 x 0.7 = $4900 ($2100 Amazon commission)

$4900 x 0.6 = $2940 (£1757 this week from that book)

As I say, it's a snap shot rather than looking at their net over the year and they will undoubtedly peak at some point then drop in rank. Obviously this is only to work out what a SP author is earning rather than anyone who has gone the traditional route as they will undoubtedly have individual deals with their publishers. Although I suppose it could be a blunt instrument if you wanted to make assumptions on what they would be earning from their deals.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If you have a book that is actively selling, the Amazon sales rank can change hourly, and be less favorable at the end of the day then it was at the beginning, so I don't think the formula is anywhere as simple as you think. Every time you sell a book, your rating spikes, but if you don't sell a book in the next hour or so your rating suffers. You can give yourself headaches trying to figure out what it all means.

On the other hand, if you self-publish your book through Kindle, then you have the actual sales reports to go by, and they do keep a running total of your sales.

 

[ralphkern]

If you have a book that is actively selling, the Amazon sales rank can change hourly, and be less favorable at the end of the day then it was at the beginning, so I don't think the formula is anywhere as simple as you think. Every time you sell a book, your rating spikes, but if you don't sell a book in the next hour or so your rating suffers. You can give yourself headaches trying to figure out what it all means.

On the other hand, if you self-publish your book through Kindle, then you have the actual sales reports to go by, and they do keep a running total of your sales.

I'm going by my own experience here. My own oscillates by about 200 over a day, although is trending down in sales rank. Call me old fashioned but I don't fancy giving out my log on for people to view my sales reports but as I say, its for getting a general idea.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Call me old fashioned but I don't fancy giving out my log on for people to view my sales reports but as I say, its for getting a general idea.

I think it's in poor taste to reveal one's exact sales numbers, so I don't think you are being old-fashioned; I think you are just showing good manners.

 

[ralphkern]

Exactly, great minds and all that jazz.

I wanted to provide people with a tool they can use to help sate a bit of a curiosity on this topic. The book I used for my example, has gone from 251 (I rounded initially) to 254 in the hour or so since my first post on the topic. My own peak is in the very early morning GMT (the vast majority of sales come from the US) so if I had to hazard a guess, if I were to check in a couple of hours it would have nudged down again. It is still in the 100 - 300 boundary though on the calculator and still will be unless/until it hits a selling rank of 1001.