Question being answered: Is there any difference on what author is paid by how I buy the book?
We know that fans genuinely want to buy in a place that supports their authors the most. Obviously, Amazon and other businesses take a share of anything sold on their site, but does the author get more if you buy it direct or does it somehow add a bunch of costs and they don’t really end up earning more?
So, short answer is that yes, we earn a bit more if you buy directly from an author or our publisher, but the important part is that you actually buy what we are producing. (If you are paying for Kindle Unlimited, that counts – and pretty please, swipe through to the very end, even if it’s biographical and other material you’ve seen before because every page is paid.) For magazines including Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond, our subscription base through our website gives us a measure of financial stability. In other words, please subscribe! You can also give gift subscriptions.
Based on his experience and knowledge of the publishing business, Eric is clear in his post that the difference in income between buying from a major book store or directly from an author isn’t significant. I will add one caveat to what he wrote because it was more than a decade ago. You can now borrow digital copies from libraries and authors do indeed get some income from that. I don’t know the details, but there is some income.
What really matters is having people read, buy, and share. Authors need new readers. Publishers need new readers, and new authors. You undoubtedly already know this but it bears repeating, one of the best ways to help us find those new readers is to review what we publish. Even a simple star rating helps. Please and thank you.
– Bethanne (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine)
05 December 2014 19:39
Obtain the book you want in whatever manner and format suits you best, whether that’s buying a copy (hardcover, paperback, ebook, audio, whatever), taking it out from a library, reading it off Baen’s Free Library. borrowing it from a friend, or getting it at a used book story. The only thing I disapprove of is stealing the book, not because I care personally since the loss to me is trivial but because it’s WRONG and if you steal something YOU’RE A JACKASS.
Here’s the cold-blooded reasoning behind my reply: In order for me to make a living as a full-time writer I have to sell somewhere around 100,000 copies of one of my books in one or another income-earning format EACH AND EVERY YEAR. And my fan base is dissolving constantly because most people stop reading an author after a while because they’ve either read everything of theirs or just lose interest. So an author has to be continually recreating his audience. The only way to do that is to cast your net as widely as possible, so to speak. I want copies of my books available in as many places as possible and in as many formats as possible, and I just don’t care how someone runs across me or how they find it most convenient to obtain a copy of one of my books. (With the caveat, again, of NO STEALING, JACKASS.) The difference in income to me from sales of one or another format is just not worth worrying about, including if my income is zero (as it will be from a library checkout or a book bought at a used book store). If you like my writing, I figure I’ll wind up earning something from you sooner or later.
Authors who worried about stuff like that are lost in a forest of three trees, to use an old Russian proverb.
