emsuniverse said:
Answer to question 2 in a reply: I read somewhere that a first time author can expect to sell around 500 books. PA makes their money by the quantity of books that are sold and first time authors generally do not sell that many books.
Okay, then.
Where that 500 copies nonsense comes from, and my commentary on it, is here:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47082
A first time author with a decent publisher in the USA can expect to sell one heck of a lot more than 500 copies.
Let's figure out what a commonly expected sales number for a first-time novelist is. $2,000 is a very common first-timer advance. The advance is set to approximately equal the expected sales for the book.
A $2,000 advance would be the equivalent of 3,129 mass market copies, or 1,338 trade paperback copies, or 833 trade cloth copies. Or some combination of the three formats that adds up the same. For example, 500 each of each of the three formats comes to $2,267.10 in royalties. Which is within spitting distance of the Bookscan 500 copies per ISBN number. (Bookscan doesn't track titles -- it tracks ISBNs, and each format that a particular title is in gets its own ISBN.)
That's 1,500 copies sold, which is something on the order of 20 times more than PA sells per title (counting the books the author buys that are still in the trunk of his car a year later).
Same reply post, this time to #4:
I believe that every author should have books on hand as you will find that many people prefer to buy "autographed" books so they can brag the know the author. I carry my books everywhere I go and display them. I cannot begin to count how many books I have sold in resturants by simply placing the book next to me on the table. The waitress will notice the book and it gives me the opportunity to show the book. Without exception I have always sold books.
That's... something.
I have never in my life done anything like this.
I hang with a lot of authors. None of them, to the best of my knowledge, have done anything like this.
Next thread - talkin' about royalties:
My first book "Dust on the Saddle" has been #1 best selling western from PA for the past 7 months so I'm hoping to get at least $25 or $30 in the royalty check this cycle.
Oh dear Lord.
The #1 best selling Western from PA has an Amazon sales rank of 1.2
million.
The author's expected royalties are ... $0.72.