Grand Central Arena: Anatomy of a moderate success in publishing...

[seawasp]

Well, I just got my royalty statement for the first period in which Grand Central Arena and Threshold were released. The short summary is that GCA has earned out its advance in the first six months of release with a sell-through of about 81%, and Threshold is near earning out in hardcover, with a reasonable sell-through of about 61%. In addition, Boundary did a significant surge in sales, with (I'm guessing) another 3500 - 4000 copies sold.

. The way in which this all works, however, may be of interest to those who are writers, or who may be writers, and are watching the current industry trends. I am therefore going to speak in detail about Grand Central Arena. Other people have done similar breakdowns, but there may be salient points of interest based on the unique period we are currently going through -- the transition from mostly-paper to mostly-electronic markets.



   The first interesting point is probably this simple fact: based on print numbers, Grand Central Arena could not possibly earn out. According to my statement, the total number of books shipped (and thus the maximum number that could possibly have been sold) was 9,104 (out of, I would guess, an initial print run of 10,000, since I sincerely doubt anyone prints 9,104 books in a run). On GCA I have an 8% royalty rate; at a 100% sell through (which will never, ever happen; I think John Ringo is legendary for managing over 90% a couple of times), therefore, the entire run would have earned me 9104*7.99*0.08 = $5,819.28.

   My advance for Grand Central Arena was $8,000. Meaning that even absolutely perfect performance in the marketplace would have left me about $2200 short of earning out.

   In actuality, as of the end of December, 7,141 copies of GCA had sold, giving me $4,564.62 in income (my calculations say it's 4564.53, oddly).  Now, apparently that didn't include Canadian sales, because those get accounted for as $305.86.

   So, obviously, something else must have kicked in to make up the difference.

   One part of that, of course, was the unexpected but gratifying sale of the Japanese foreign language rights to Hayakawa, which netted me an additional $1,050. Note that in this case Baen makes out like a bandit, because the Japanese actually paid $2100 for those rights, and Baen gets 50% rather than what an agent would take (about 15%). Still, that's another thousand for me, so I'm not kicking.

   Nonetheless, that leaves me over two thousand dollars in the hole. Where does the rest come from?

   Webscriptions. I.e., ebooks. Over $2,000 from the Ebook sales.

   Some of those were for EArcs -- Electronic Advance Readers Copies, which are copies of the book, in electronic form, before the final editing and changes. For the privilege of reading it before anyone else, these people paid TWICE what the paperback costs. The rest would be regular Webscriptions -- either from my share of the whole monthly bundle in which they were released, or from people buying it individually.

   And that's with Baen ebooks ONLY available on their site, not through the vastly more trafficked Amazon.com.

   Over ONE QUARTER of my income from this book came from sales of electronic books. Under conditions that I don't think were even optimal for the Ebook version (not being available in the known-largest market for Ebooks can't be ideal).

    The Electronic Age has arrived for books; I think there's no doubt about it.

  

What does this mean for me? Well, it looks like I'll have a good shot at doing a sequel, or more than one, for GCA, and maybe get to do some more in the Boundaryverse as well. Plus, this proves FINALLY that I, as an individual author, can sell enough books to make a publisher money. I'm no longer in the question-mark category.

I'm pretty happy, eh? :)

Comments

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

Yay for a possible sequel to GCA.
I appreciated the page you set up online to explain your many homages and references. It helped. :)

[redrose999.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm very proud of you luv! *Hugs*

[elainegrey.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Here's me with a copy of GCA I found in the bookstore. I bought it even though I was a beta reader. :) (probably BECAUSE I was a beta reader but I bet I would have bought it anyway)

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I like this. Anyone can put crap up on the web (actually: everybody does put crap on the web, and they can't be stopped), but getting your fiction actually transcribed onto ink smears and dead tree parts means something. It's good to see someone I know producing commercially-available physical artifacts.

I visit the S section of the SF section regularly; I'll keep an eye out for Spoor.

[dsrtao]

I am pleased that you are likely to continue being published!

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

As a data point on the consumer side, while Baen has a lower overall "footprint" than Amazon, Webscriptions and particularly the Free Library have been very, very well known in techie-circles for years. These are the same people who buy and read large quantities of SF and fantasy literature. Many of these people avoid Amazon's and B&N's on-line stores specifically because of the device locks. I'm not so fanatical about it, but I still would (and do!) buy from Webscriptions instead of Amazon when possible.

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on making it to solid midlist author. :) Now to make best seller. :)

Ok, I can dream... I'm glad to hear this, and yes I'm a beta reader and I bought the eArc and the Webscription month with GCA in it. Well also did the same for threshold.

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

Congrats! Being a question mark is always frustrating. :)

[ancientone.livejournal.com]

Congratulations. I really know a up and coming author. This is so cool. what's the chance you can get one or more picked up for movie rights?

Hey, this looks like it is going to be a great summer for you.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! ... and 'hurrah!' for the chance of 'GCA2'

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Very cool.

[threeringedmoon.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

[shana.livejournal.com]

Excellent news!

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

That is so exciting! I'm so glad for you.

[masgramondou.livejournal.com]

Conga rats all around!

So when I bought the eARC and the WS bundle (buying almost the same set of electrons twice) how much did you get? Is that explained?

20% x $15 + 20%*$15/6?

[seawasp]

The EArc, being GCA and nothing else, probably that's right ($3.00), but for the BUNDLE I think the division depends on the relative expected demand for a particular book (so if David Weber and I are in the same bundle, David Weber gets a somewhat bigger cut).

Now, if you buy my Ebook individually, that's different.

[gary-jordan.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, and best wishes for continued sales.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Good news, Ryk, especially in this economy. :)

[seawasp]

How are yours doing? I know you had a, um, more formidable target to overcome with the three.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

They're not doing as well as I'd like. I get some drag from people who are unhappy that the secret society is secret, and from other readers who complain that nothing happens in the first third of Child of Fire.

I don't have an order for more in the series; I'm sure Del Rey is waiting to see if sales for book 3 improve sufficiently.

But like you, the print runs of my books aren't large enough to earn back my advance even if they had 100% sellthrough, which makes me think earning out is more of a concern for me than my publisher.

[voradams.livejournal.com]

The -thing that scares me is how much money we are talking about here. $8000 advance? As a low level public servant I earn over $50k a year I proberly put $8k in super alone.

And I would have thought sales would be higher. 8000 books, represents the population of a regional rural city here in oz, so the population of a Dubbo or Wagga Wagga bought the book. And the population of the US is how big?

I know australia hits above its weight in book sales, but my guess we could be 10% of baen's market and that's without the book not being available to the large retailers. Or am I over estimating?

[seawasp]

That's why authors don't quit their day jobs. You're competing with every single other author, old and new. Plus video games, movies, dates, dinners out, etc.

Though you are underestimating the books. Double that number. 16,000 books, as each book pays roughly $0.50.

If you're a GOOD-selling author your advance may be $15k, $20k, or even more. But God Help You if you stop earning out advances at that size. A large advance can be a hell of a curse; if you don't earn it out, you're a loser from the point of view of most publishers. Oh, a new author isn't expected to earn out ... but the new author also isn't expected to have a large advance. The advance for Digital Knight was $5,000 (which it never quite earned out). A new author with no prior record and a $30,000 advance is potentially in for a world of hurt. Some authors who've been in that position ended up having to invent a new publication name.

[voradams.livejournal.com]

Your papeback was for sale in australia for $20. You get 50c. That has to be wrong on most levels (and why Amazon and book repository are killing retail in australia)

[seawasp]

I get 8% of the retail price on the cover. If people importing it across the Pacific add 12 bucks to the price, that's a separate issue.

I'm happy too

[saintonge.livejournal.com]

I continue to maintain the position that GRAND CENTRAL ARENA is one of the greatest space operas ever written. Further, should you sell a sequel, there will be demand for the original, bringing you and Baen more money.

Including my e-ARC money, because I'll jump on the sequel like a starving horde of rats.