It could make a million for you overnight

[austin_dern]

And some good professional news! I mean in my profession of doing academic-style stuff. I must have mentioned in passing being frustrated with the publisher of my first textbook, which came out in late 2006, since they never got around to sending me royalty statements or checks. A couple of times I chatted with the editor my co-author and I worked with and pointed this out, but promised follow-up action on this never materialized (although I did get a copy of one year's statement e-mailed me, by my co-author).

In late December they mailed out requests for all their authors to update contact information. If I understand the contact information they had for me correct, they thought I was at my old department --- which was reorganized out of existence --- at my old university --- which I wasn't --- and so if they were making efforts to contact me it was going to a nonexistent mailbox on the wrong (albeit existent) continent. Whey they didn't talk to the person who was e-mailing them I don't know, but I did send the person requesting the updated information a fairly snippy note pointing out that not only was their information bad but I had made multiple efforts to get any kind of royalty statement or check out of them and no longer believed they issued such things. The person expressed shock and apologized, and I supposed that this would have to do until I could get around to having a lawyer send them a vaguely threatening letter.

Instead, however, I've got a neat envelope with royalty statements for 2006, 2007, and 2008, along with a check for the accumulated sum which is not going to be enough to retire on, but gets above the minimum price for a MacBook Pro, which makes a nice windfall.

According to the statement up through 2008 the book's sold a total of 339 copies, which is good enough to get above the two millionth spot in Amazon.com's rankings. 186 of them were in the US, 152 of them in the EU, and 1 in the mysteriously labelled BK. I can only assume that I have a stronger readership in Burger King than I would have anticipated.

Trivia: In both 2003 and 2004 the United States supported 3,377 book publishers. The number of greeting card publishers rose from 114 to 120, however. Source: Statistical Abstract Of The United States: 2008. United States Census Bureau.

Currently Reading: Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story, David Hitt, Owen K Garriott, Joseph P Kerwin.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of money! I had no idea it would be so much. I have always gotten the impression that the money people make from publishing philosophy books would hardly buy you a nice lunch, let alone a MacBook Pro.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, this is also essentially the book's entire salable life assembled as one lump sum. There's probably going to be a little bit left for 2009 and maybe a pity sale in 2010.

Still, if I could get a textbook published on my own every year that'd be ... well, not lavish, but a nice holiday fund.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Ahh, excellent stuff. Glad to hear. :)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It's mighty gratifying, yes, thanks.

[seawasp]

The margin on your book is clearly much larger than that on standard fiction books.

Note also that Amazon's rankings are very much "what have you done for me LATELY". If you and two friends went out and bought copies of your book at the same time (say, within a few minutes of each other), the ranking would bounce up into the thousands range, maybe even higher depending on time of day, and stay hovering in the hundreds of thousands for quite a while.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

The margin is indeed. Actually, the royalty slightly bothers me because we went in planning for a book that'd sell around $40, high but not intolerable, and it instead sold for about twice that. On the other hand, it sold about as well as could reasonably be expected for its context, and a second edition has been discussed, so maybe they knew the pricing point after all.

I did, when the compulsion to check myself on Amazon was newest and strongest, check every couple hours and watch as the book sales receded in time. I don't remember ever cracking the one-million mark, but maybe the next one will do better.

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

BK isn't an ISO 3166 alpha 2 code for anything, but it is the FIPS 10-4 code for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I suppose it could be Bosnia and Herzegovina, although I'd have expected to have some sales in, you know, the Pacific Rim or India somewhere making the list. In fact, I know at least one copy was sold in Singapore, but if that was in the 2009 list that wouldn't have made the reports I have yet.