Potential to Make Money As an Author

This article is going to cover income potential via traditional publishing. So for all of you out there wanting to write and publish a book this article is for you. Before you can be a best-selling author you need to get your book into the hands of a traditional publisher and then have that publisher actually publish your book. Publishers are in the business to make money not to satisfy egos of authors. The most important thing to a traditional publisher is the number of books they can sell. Another important thing a publisher wants is to sign authors that have many more books inside them that they can later publish. In the old days publishers knew it was going to take three books to break an author and were willing to invest time and money in a new author. They knew they would lose money on the first two books but then make it all back plus their profit on the third book. Well, publishers want to make money on the first book and make money on the next two as well. The first book has to be profitable and it has to be profitable in the first 21-90 days or the publisher will lose interest and move on to the next book in the publishing queue. Now without a selling platform established in advance your chances of signing a lucrative book deal are practically zero. Did you know that 95% of all traditionally published books sell less than 500 copies? Can you really live off of the royalties on the sale of 500 books? Of course not. Not only that but if you only sell 500 copies of your book you will receive no royalties at all. That's because royalties are only paid after the publisher recoups their production costs. Those costs include: the advance, editing, interior and exterior layout, etc. Congratulations, John Doe Publisher is going to publish your book. You will be paid a $2500 advance and you will receive an 8% royalty on all books that are sold. John Doe Publisher will own the copyright, publishing and distribution rights of your book. Well, you'll be paid the $2500 advance and your book will go into production. 

1. Editing- These costs vary depending on how much editing you need. My guess is that all books published at the big publishing houses are going to put your book through comprehensive editing - plot, character development, continuity, grammar, spelling, etc. Costs for this service are between $.10 and $.20 per word. If you've written a 70,000 word book then editing will cost $7,000-$14,000.
2. Interior Layout- this is how your book will look inside. All the formatting and laying out of the text takes place at this stage of production. The process of preparing your text for print will cost $500 - $1,000.
3. Cover Design - A professionally designed cover is extremely important for the success of any book. Cover design will cost $500 - $1,000.

If the wholesale price is $5.00 then to break even requires sales of 26,250 - 46,250 books! Remember that 95% of traditionally published books sell less than 500 copies. Even if you take an average of the revenue reported by the traditional publishers and using an average sales price of $10.00 per book, divide that by the total books published this results in an average number of sales of about 7,500 books per title.

Source by ezinearticles.com