how my book is doing...

[Lynn Fredricks]

> Unfortunately, Colin is right. The going royalty rate tends 
> to be around 10%  On all the medical books I have published, 
> the royalty was 10% divided among all authors. One extremely 
> big project got 12% divided among 6 editors, each of us getting 2%.
> 
> I think Amazon's Kindle bookstore gives authors 30% but all 
> they do is provide a place to download from. Absolutely 
> nothing else. And, of course, your only option as a Kindle 
> customer is the e-Book version, eliminating sales to people 
> who want a hardcopy.

You might want to look at a POD type venue like lulu.com.

At one time, roles in publishing were very well defined, just like in
software. You had authors, publishers, distributors and retailers (and those
divided up as well, street, catalog, etc).

Even though new channels have appeared, many have consolidated roles and may
or may not be to you/our benefit.

A venue that does no marketing for you, no real support, and basically
"shelves" your product for access is a retailer. If you look a the old
model, retailers could expect anywhere from 25-40% of the pie. That's the
reason why I have never grumbled about the cost of the MAS (the changing
specifications of being on the MAS though increase the "cost" of doing
business with them though). 

Some people expect that MAS or others are going to do more for you, and that
you don't need to do any real marketing. Retailers don't do that for you.

But some, like MAS and others have additional, hidden costs (when it comes
to software). And a big one is ownership of the customer relationship. A
huge amount of business is in upselling or sidegrading, and you can only
effectively do that if you understand who your customer is. It makes
feast-or-famine type situations more and more common with those who sell
through those types of venues.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
President
Paradigma Software
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

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