My husband sent me this blog post from writer Brian McClellan, and I thought it was fascinating. He writes about how authors earn money from their books, and which types of formats support the author. (McClellan is an epic fantasy writer, but I should tell you I’m not familiar with his books.)
We know so little about how to support the authors we love, although McClellan does reassure us that he’d rather have a devoted fan in any format. Personally, I’m not going to change the way I read because it’s more lucrative for an author. But I do want to know the author is getting a fair deal.
McClellan provides a ranking of which types of purchases benefit the author most, based on his personal experience with a big publisher. He notes that, in large part, the higher the cost of the book, the more benefit to the author.
- purchasing direct from the author
- hardcover
- audiobook
- ebook
- borrowing from libraries
- trade paperback
- mass market paperback
- secondhand
- piracy
He discusses each of these formats and comes up with an average dollar benefit per book for each type. He concludes that e-books offer the best “reader cost” to “author benefit” ratio, and of course reminds us that word of mouth support and reader reviews are helpful too.
I was interested to read the part about library books, and to see that I’m not doing an author a huge disservice by reading through my library. Libraries pay a high markup on ebooks and audiobooks, but then they can lend to an unlimited number of patrons. McClellan notes that the support of library readers is important to him, and still earns him some income, and gets his books read more widely. I would add to that, my library will order e-books if a number of people request them, and I’m assuming that also influences the number of e-books they order. So requesting an e-book from my library would have to be a good thing for the author.
We know so little about how authors are paid, and of course it all depends on contracts and publishers. Here’s an example: the recent movie Home is based on an entertaining children’s book written by Adam Rex (a friend of my sister). Does he make less because the movie doesn’t have an obvious relation to his book, The True Meaning of Smekday? Of course he’s got to be pretty happy to have his book made into a big-studio movie, and one I hear good things about. But I’m not sure viewers will connect the movie to his books.
In the near future I will have a post from an author who recently went from a publishing house to self-publishing. She’ll tell us why. I’ve also heard negative things about how “rental clubs” like Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited treat authors. But I don’t know what’s true.
So check out McClellan’s thoughtful post, and let me know what you think. Thankfully, there are a lot of ways to support the authors we love.
