A couple of days ago I spoke to a crowd at The Evansville Museum about the Tri-State Tornado of 1925. And tonight I’m speaking in Princeton on the same subject. It’s something I spent over a year researching and writing as part of my book by the same name: The Great Tri-State Tornado.
At the end of my talk — which I did for “free”, insofar as the hosts were paying for my travel expenses — the host graciously encouraged people to buy a copy of my book as they headed out the door.
The salesman in me piped up, and I said,
“Yeah, if I can express one small bit of opinion here. If and when you have the opportunity to buy a book directly from an author, you should do that. Nothing against the free enterprise system, but when you buy from me you’re buying books I purchased directly from my publisher. They set the price at $25. I buy them for $15. That means when I sell a copy — of inventory I’ve already bought — I make $10. None of this makes any author rich unless you’re J.K. Rowling or Stephen King.
But when you buy from a big retailer like Amazon, they take 30% on top of the 50% from the publisher. Another portion gets deducted for card processing fees and it leaves the author with about $1-$3 per sale.”
This caused a few audible gasps in the room.
So if and when you can buy a book from an author, either through their website or at an event like a book signing, you should do that. It ensures the author gets as much money as possible.
The economics of writing the book were not surprising to me. This is not some new fee structure. It’s not new to Amazon, either. It’s probably been this way since the advent of the bookstore.
Yes, buying from a local bookstore results in about the same fee structure. There just isn’t much appetite among book buyers to buy a book at $45 or more to give the publisher, printer, retailer, and author a sustainable cut. In fact, this is partly why you still can’t buy eBooks through Kindle on your iPhone or iPad: the resulting economics just does not support Apple’s 30% App Store commission charge.
Local bookstores and even big retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble have a place. I have nothing against their companies. Frankly, they have not done anything negative to book publishing that wasn’t already in place. If anything, the advent of the Kindle and ubiquitous, easy-to-order books may been a benefit to the industry overall.
But it doesn’t change the economic fact that for me to write even a modest book about one single tornado in 1925 resulted in trips, hotel stays, gas, and time committed to scouring archives, photo albums, and news stories. Then the process of actually writing, revising, and working with my publisher. This process took over two years. I paid for all the travel expenses and time.
I haven’t seen a sales report from my publisher yet. So I don’t know how many books have been sold “in the channel” yet, but I know how many I’ve sold, and assuming my time is worth $0, I have just about broken even on the travel expenses. Even when I do find out how many books the publisher has sold directly in a few weeks, it won’t change much: all those books will result in a lump sum payment of what is surely tens of dollars.
So when you have the chance to buy a book, a song, a film, a show, or any other creative endeavor directly from the artist, you should do so.
