Aishwarya 00:10
Welcome to the book people, I'm assure you as a writer, book editor, Podcast Producer, and the head of originals at bomb in this heartbreaking podcast, I demystify the publishing and creative industries, and uncover the biggest opportunities and challenges for writers in India today. Welcome to another one of my short episodes, where I take one pressing question that all of you have, and really go into the depth of it. And today, we're talking man. So imagine this, right? You're an author, you've written a book, you send it to publishers, and you get into a bidding war, where so many publishers want to pick up your book and publish it, you know, you finally published the book, it becomes an instant hit bestseller, you have amazing reviews, it gets picked up by Oprah for her book club, and you become very, very, very rich. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? But today, I'm going to throw a bucket of water on you, and focus on what the reality of being an Indian author looks like. So today, we're gonna talk about how much money can an Indian author actually make by publishing a book? And what exactly are the sources of revenue? So let's dive in. So there are generally three ways that an author makes money through publishing a book, and this is talking about traditional publishing. Right, so the first thing that an author gets is an advance. So this is something they get when the contract is signed with the publisher. And essentially, an advance is a token amount that the publisher is giving in promise of royalties, basically telling the author that, you know, we want to publish this book, right. And the advance can vary from a few 1000s to maybe two, three lakhs five lakhs at the most in India. And it basically depends on, you know, how famous or popular the author is, if there is someone who have already published a lot of books, then their advanced would be higher, especially if there is proof of success, right that the author's book will become a best seller. It also depends on what is the subject matter of the book, if it is something where the publisher feels like this is going to have, you know, a huge success. And so the publisher wants to incentivize the author by basically giving them more money upfront, right. And the third thing is, if it's a nonfiction book that requires a lot of research, the advance amount is something that also helps authors kind of spend that money in order to do the research, especially say it's a travel book, and they need to travel a lot to get the information, things like that. So that is the advance. The second source of revenue is royalties. royalties are basically the percentage that the author gets out of every book that is sold by the publisher. Usually, the royalties are also specified in the publishing contract, and they are staggered. So if a book sells more than 5000 copies, then the royalty percentage will go up. If it sells more than 10,000, or 15,000 copies, the royalty percentage will go up once more. In India, the royalties range between seven to 15%. And this essentially means that if your royalties are 10%, so for every copy of the book sold, the author will get 10% of the retail price of the book. So authors usually get royalties on a quarterly or an annual basis based on how many copies of the books are sold. So this is something that authors get once the book is published, and it's out there. And it depends on book sales, basically. And what happens is because the author has received an advance amount earlier, the advance amount is kind of deleted or subtracted from the royalties that the author makes with the book. So technically in advance is very much a part of the royalties, it's just that it's an amount that the author gets beforehand, whereas royalties can only be received after the book is published. Now, the third and most variable revenue source for authors is your subsidiary rights. And it essentially includes every other way that an author can make money. For example, if your book is turned into an audiobook, so you will get a percentage of the audiobook revenue. If your book gets adapted to the screen, you get money through that or if it is translated into different languages, or if it is sold outside the territory of your original contract. So if you have a contract with your publisher for say, India, or Indian subcontinent, South Asia, right, and then the book starts getting sold in the UK and it gets sold to a UK publisher. So that would be an additional source of income to whatever you already We know that you're gonna get through your royalties and your advance. And this really varies, right, because most books don't get picked up for the screen. But if your book does get picked up, that's a huge revenue source that gets added to what you already thought that you would get through the books is themselves, right. So there's a lot of scope here. And so whenever if you are an author looking at a contract, you should definitely look at the details of the subsidiary rights, and look at what rights you want to keep what rights you want to give away, things like that. But one thing to keep in mind is that this revenue that is generated by say your book getting adapted to the screen, that revenue amount is split between the publisher and the author. So even in this case, in the contract, there would be specific percentages of how much the author would keep, and how much the publisher would keep. And if you have a literary agent, then the literary agent would also get a piece of the pie. So let's Matt, now you can expect a debut author publishing their very first book to make less than 2000 copies, usually, I know that's very disheartening, but that is the reality in India. And so let's take an estimate of 1000 copies. So you're an author who has sold 1000 copies of your book right and now, the book retails at say 250 rupees, which again is an arbitrary price, because this can also range and the retail price is basically what the book is being sold at in bookstores or on Amazon right? So, what is the price at which readers are buying the book, now, if that price is 250 What that means is that the publisher has probably sold copies of the book from Dr end at 200 rupees right. So, 200 is then what gets calculated to look at your royalty amount, now 200 rupees per copy 1000 copies sold. So, that means the revenue generated by selling this book is two lakh rupees. Now, out of these two lakh rupees, if the royalty percentage that the author is getting is 10% That essentially means that the author has got 20,000 rupees. So, now from these two lakh rupees, if your royalty percentage is 10%, then you as an author get 20,000 rupees in hand, right, let that sink. So that's 20,000 rupees that you as an author make for however long you spent months years writing this book, editing this book, getting the book published, making whatever marketing efforts you made to ensure that the books sold well. And what you get and hundreds to 1000s rupees. And if you have a literary agent, agents usually get 10% of what authors make, right. So, then your agent will be taking 2000 rupees from your 20,000, which means, at the end of the day, you have 18,000 rupees in hand. Now, obviously, since the royalties depend on says it's very much possible that your book says you know, 1000s and 10 1000s of copies and it becomes a best seller and the more copies you sell, obviously, the more money you make, right in India, any book that sells over 10,000 copies is considered a best seller. So let's look at what are the factors that actually affect book sales, and in that way, impact how much money you can make as an author. So the first point, obviously, is the popularity of the author. Now if as an author, you're someone who already has a huge social media following, or an audience built in a ready readership to buy the book, then that ensures that more copies of the book would get sold, which is again something that publishers are really looking for. Right. So this is why publishers look for authors with a ready audience because it guarantees a certain number of sales. The second factor that really impacts sales is the subject matter in the category of the book. So usually, nonfiction books are easier to sell and have a wider readership than fiction books, simply because nonfiction books are also read by non readers, right? People were just interested in that particular topic or want to know more about that, versus fiction, which always has this very ardent readership of people who are heavy readers. So that does make a difference. And that's why a lot of publishers as well prefer to publish a lot more nonfiction nowadays. And obviously, within fiction and nonfiction, the categories of the genres that you're publishing in obviously matter, for example, in nonfiction, self help is currently doing really well. So one would expect that a self help book would generate more sales, but obviously that depends on how well the book is written as well. Then book formats are also something that makes a huge difference. Obviously, we have print books, but now ebooks and especially audio books have been gradually increasing in sales, and this kind of counts in the total sales. figure of the books and counts under your subsidiary rights, especially for audiobooks in terms of how much money you make. Another factor that's really important is the credibility and the marketing efforts of the publishers. Now, publishers usually make some amount of marketing effort for every book on their list. But what they also do is that they choose to spend more money in marketing and promoting books where they anticipate more sales. So usually, a W authors book will not get that much marketing exposure, or that much money spent by the publisher in terms of marketing the book. But obviously, we know that the better visibility, more visibility that a book gets, the more possibility of its sales numbers going high. One surprising thing, though, is that awards and prizes, which you would expect to have a good big impact on sales don't really impact sales as much. So even if a book wins, like a GCP prize, or any other kind of prize, it doesn't really have a massive impact on sales as much as we would expect it to have, although maybe international prizes like the Booker Prize would impact the book sales to a certain extent. So how much money can an author really make by publishing a book? The answer is not that much. I mean, obviously, this varies based on the author success based on how many books are published based on a variety of factors. In terms of the subject matter as well, certain events can lead to certain books being pushed or readership going up, for example, during the pandemic, there were a lot of pandemic related books, COVID related books that were published, that obviously had a very ready audience to kind of consume that. So this is very variable. But as an author, if you're thinking of quitting your day job to write full time, that's not something that is sustainable, unless you have other incomes in place, right. So usually, people can not absolutely cannot sustain themselves only by writing books. In fact, in an article in 2019, deja vu himself, at that point, had published 15 books, talks about how he can sustain himself only on the money he makes from writing either. And most writers can't write unless you're like a Stephen King, or I don't like a Dan Brown, who are publishing as much in order to sustain themselves simply through the money they get by publishing the book. So how do authors make money. So a lot of authors make additional income through speaking gigs, through workshops, through, you know, writing in other formats, or hosting things, or starting podcasts, things like that. So basically alternative methods, where they can take that expertise that they have in writing, or in the subject that they are an expert at. And they can take it to a variety of formats. Right. So that is the way that authors are currently focusing on making. In conclusion, if you're trying to write and publish a book to make money, stop now, that's not gonna work at all. But if you're writing and publishing a book simply because of the joy of writing, because you're a writer, because you want fame, you want to see your name published on a book, and you want people to read your thoughts for all of these ideas. Definitely, definitely go through the publishing process, and enjoy it. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The BookPeople. Let me know if there are any other pressing questions that you want me to answer about the publishing industry and the opportunities that exist for writers in the creative industries as a whole. And don't forget to check out the bound publishing course, the details of which will be in the description below. This is an amazing three month course that we have come up with. We're very excited to help people learn the skills to work in the industry, and to get jobs and internships to actually start working in the industry. So I expect a lot of you to check out the course to maybe come for the course learn from the best of India's publishers and publishing experts. And by Jan 2020 Ford, hopefully start working in the industry, just like us