The percent recognised to the authors is often lower than the discounts on the cover price offered to distributors of printed book.
For e-books, the computation is obscure and penalising because most downloadings are done in the frame of forfait contracts and because often not based on the single title.
Franco, an interesting question but unfortunately worded in a way that makes it a tad obscure - e.g. what is a 'forfait' contract ?
To 'forfeit' in English means to waive or to forgo, it would mean that you actually waive your royalties.
If you meant it as the French word 'forfait' - either a lump sum or a framework agreement in English - then I'm not sure either what kind of eBook publishing you entered into - with not well-known Publishers this can be an issue. With some publishers you'll never be paid a cent regardless of numbers sold.
Not sure what your 'percent recognised' sentence means - do you mean 'the percentage allocated to authors is less than your fee "? This should not be relevant - your percentage royalty is not affected by any discount. If you are granted 10% of end buyer sale price, this holds irrespective of the sale price.
In any event, the truth is that the major publishing houses keep their accounts and sales number properly tracked and pay their authors accordingly. Some lesser publishers do blithely fiddle with monies owed.
As a case in point - I published a few years ago a French-language whodunit for fun - never received a cent although I know for a fact that it sold moderately.
Adding insult to injury, the book was badly published - a WIP (work in progress version) was published instead of the finished version. You'd think it were the job of any publisher to ensure that the proper final version be published (BTW, if anybody wants a free pdf version of the book, simply ask.)
Bottom line: publish only with the majors ....
My clarifications:
–"forfait" is for the French word, used here to mean a Contract, typically made by an Institution, where a lump sum is paid for a large annual number of downloadings, so there is not an explicit value for each downloading on which to compute the royalties, they say.
–"percent recognised" means the value of the royalties per copy of the price of the book. However, is not true that the revenue for the author is always independent on the discount applied to actually sold copies.
I have rather recent experiences with a major worldwide publishing house, where:
a) the royalties are paid as a percent of the actual selling price of each copy;
b) it was impossible the obtain the count of the eBook copies sold with the above type of contracts (actually sold by chapter) on which the royalties were computed;
c) the annual royalties total is said to be computed for a group of eBook and not for the individual title (and the algorithm is not supplied);
d) the royalties for the eBook form is (nominally, see (c)) the same percent of the book in paper form, though the cost to the publisher is certainly lower;
e) in one case, the eBook form was added without being included in the signed Contract.
Therefore, your truth looks not always true, even for contracts with major publishing houses.
In particular, issue (d) looks not fair.
I would like to understand if also other authors faced similar issues, especially for publication also in the eBook form.
We seem to have a language barrier issue here - I certainly did not indicate that the revenue was the same, I said that the percentage was the same. To wit, if your book sells for $6, you get 60 cents on a 10% scheme, and if it sells for $30, then you get $3: the revenue is clearly not the same, but the contracted % worth is wholly unaffected.
I'm not clear as to why you'd sprinkle an English language text with misleading foreign-language words ? Maybe if you happen to not know a word a less misleading way would be to look it up rather than using a foreign word without forewarning or explanation....
Your issue in d) must be addressed beforehand in the contract you write. Self-publishing would of course leave you with a higher percentage, but self-publishing, especially in science, is usually not a good idea; maybe the fees you leave to the publishing house can be deemed as your recognition of the true service they provide in enhancing your exposure. No one will ever read , let alone review, a self-published science book, because of all the Dunning Kruger's out there who self-publish.
Yes, I have a problem with royalties. A huge number of books are being sold and royalties for very few sold books are being paid to the authors by IGI Global.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Climate Science
- Climate Change