Kind of confused on royalties?

ShannonC_77 said:

Do these royalties get deducted from the advance somehow so that they only start paying you once the royalties total the advance...

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Yes. It's an "advance against royalties," meaning that you have to earn back the amount of your advance first before you begin getting royalty payments. Many books never earn out. Some earn out in the first reporting period and pay off for years and years.

ShannonC_77 said:

So I just read the thread about how much people have made with their novels and I just wanted to make sure I understand this correctly.

The advance is what you get paid when the publisher first agrees to publish the book and then you will earn royalties for as long as the book keeps selling?

Do these royalties get deducted from the advance somehow so that they only start paying you once the royalties total the advance, or it is two completely separate things?

Thanks.

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Jenna has pretty much said all that needs to be said, but there is one thing I want to add. When you're earning out your advance, you need to be aware that it is not the general earnings of the book for the publisher that go towards it, but your own royalty share. For instance, if you were given a £1000 advance, and had a 10% royalty rate on a book priced £5.00 (I know books aren't priced like that, but it makes it easier) then your royalty per book sold would be 50p. You need to accumulate enough 50ps to pay back that £1000 advance. That requires sales of 2000 books before you start to be entitled to royalty payments. However, your publisher (depending on printing, editorial, shipping and other costs) might have made a small profit for themselves by then. Obviously, the larger your initial advance, the harder it is to earn it out, but that doesn't always mean that the publisher has lost money on the book.

Do what I did.

I am an aspiring author (i. e. unpublished and yet to complete a work) working on my first book. I'd probably be finished by now but, working 8 hours a day in the food service industry makes finding time to write just a touch difficult.

Finding time to read however is much easier. I read a book entitled Getting Your Book Published: For Dummies. I learned more from reading that book than I did in ten years of research. If you have a question about what is involved in getting published or paid for your work; I'd bet my teeth you'll find the answer in that book.

royalties

The main thing to know about royalties is that there probably won't be any coming your way on a first novel. Most first novels do not earn out the advance.

Jamesaritchie said:

The main thing to know about royalties is that there probably won't be any coming your way on a first novel. Most first novels do not earn out the advance.

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Most category first novels do not earn out the advance during the now-ephemeral print lives of those novels — but it's a very bare "most" across all category fiction (around 57%, based on one particular large publishing conglomerate). It's slightly the other way for general fiction. The figures have probably been shifted over the last quarter of a century due to the shrinking in-print life of the median first novel (31 months in 1979, and less than 21 months in 2003).

The key point, though, is that the author should not count on royalties on a first novel; treat that advance as all one is going to get, and any royalties as a pleasant surprise.