Royalties of a Mid-List NYT Best Seller

In Which I Give Numbers on My Most Recent Royalties and Fail to Come Up with a Decent Royal-ty Caribbean Pun Seeing as How We're on a Metaphorical Ship, Dammit! 🤷🏼‍♀️

Long time no sea (sorry 😬), Ventorship passengers! It’s been over a month since our last post, and that’s because nobody has written in to vent. I’m never going to encourage y’all to vent when you’re feeling peace of mind, so, I’m going to take it as a win for all of us that none of you have the need to get things off your chest. That means either you’ve got solid circles to get out those writerly frustrations with, or that it’s smooth sailing right now in your writer world, and I love both of those options! Just remember that the rest of the Ventorship sailors and I are all here should you ever need some advice.

In the meantime, I thought I’d give some insight into how this most recent royalty season went for me. This is by no means to brag (which you’ll see from the figures I’m about to share), but to shed some light on what at least one mid-list author is making at this stage in the game. Authors have been trained never to talk about this stuff, but then how are we to know if our sales are at all high, low, or run of the mill? It’s all about transparency on the Ventorship. Also, whenever I’m in front of kid or teen readers, they *always* ask about money, so here you go, kids! They’re also always shocked to learn that I’m not Scrooge McDuck diving into piles of coins (ow).

As of Spring 2024, I have 11 books published, 5 of which have earned out (so, you know, carry the one, that means 6 have not). I’ll go into each book, how many copies sold this period, and whether or not I got any royalties from them. For a bit more background, all my publishers pay royalties twice a year, and sales for this period cover the time span of July 1st, 2023 through December 31st, 2023. Let’s dive in:

WHOBERT WHOVER, OWL DETECTIVE (2017, picture book)

• $10K Advance

• 83 copies sold this period; all hardcover, no e-book

• No royalties earned; I’m still about $2K from earning out this advance, 7 YEARS LATER! It just goes to show that even if your first book will never earn out (I’m expecting them to tell me this will go out of print any minute), you can still have a publishing career. Don’t lose hope!

PORCUPINE CUPID (2020, picture book)

• $10K Advance

• 65 copies sold this period; 55 hardcover + 10 e-book

• No royalties earned; I’m still about $4,400 from earning out

MERMICORN ISLAND Series (2021, four chapter books, joint accounting*)

*For those that don’t know, joint accounting means that all four books in this series were grouped together in terms of royalties, so that I wouldn’t earn royalties until all four books earned out

• $34K Advance (Again, this is the advance for all four books combined)

• 4,093 copies sold this period across all formats (Going into detail of paperback, hardcover, e-book, and fairs for all four books is tough with these ones, but the vast majority of these are paperback editions sold at book fairs)

• $934.35 in royalties earned

JAY’S GAY AGENDA (2021, young adult novel)

• $40K Advance

• 3,195 copies sold this period; 57 hardcover + 1,462 paperback + 662 e-book + 1,014 audiobook

• $2,275.28 in royalties earned

OUT OF THE BLUE (2022, young adult novel)

• $50K Advance; $40K initial advance + $10K sales bonus - Thank you to all you mer readers who not only bought enough copies to initiate the sales bonus but who made OOTB a New York Times best seller!

• 4,601 copies sold this period; 375 hardcover + 2,377 paperback + 556 e-book + 1,293 audiobook

• No royalties earned

NEVER FORGET ELEANOR (2023, picture book)

• $17,500 Advance

• 462 copies sold this period; 437 hardcover + 25 e-book

• No royalties earned; I’m still about $8K from earning out

RILEY WEAVER NEEDS A DATE TO THE GAYBUTANTE BALL (2023, young adult novel)

• $50K Advance

• -243 copies (un)sold this period*; -576 hardcover + 121 e-book + 207 audiobook + 5 CDs (I love love love that audio editions get put on CDs still!)

• No royalties earned; I’m still about $34,700 away from earning out

  *Yes, you’ve read that copies sold number correctly as negative. More copies were returned than sold this last period. It’s not that people are coming to the bookstore and returning their copies, but that bookstores ordered a certain number thinking there’d be more sales and then returned those ordered books when sales didn’t show up. Honestly, it’s breaking my heart a bit, especially since RILEY isn’t even a year old yet. RWNADTTGB is my most favorite novel that’s currently out and has the most critical praise of any of my books, but my fabulous little femme just can’t find his audience**.

  **Feel free to buy copies of RILEY WEAVER for all your friends, family, and nemeses for any of your favorite holidays and occasions!

THE SPELLS WE CAST (2023, young adult novel)

• $40K Advance

• 5,995 copies sold; 5,488 hardcover + 507 e-book

• No royalties earned; I’m still about $32K from earning out

TOTAL ROYALTIES EARNED THIS PERIOD: $3,209.63

And that sums up this round of JJ royalties! If any of you happened to buy a copy or copies of my books throughout my career, thank you so much for being one of those numbers on my royalty statements. I do not take you for granted!

Have questions about any of these numbers, or would you like to see reports like this every time royalty statements come out? Let me know in the comments. I think the more information we as writers have about financial realities when we aren’t breakout best-sellers, the better, since the vast vast vast majority of us don’t get into that Mega Hit status (although I’m putting out all the good energy that we *do* all hit that!). Speaking of more information, Kristen Bird has a great post on her Substack showing her sales numbers and royalties too! If you know of any more posts where authors have shared information in regards to their sales and royalties (and I’m definitely not saying people should share unless they feel comfortable), please feel free to add them in the comments as well.

All right, my smooth sailing author-passengers! Until next time!

-JJ

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If you’d like to vent about anything author/writing related, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP. I’ll give you my take in a post, and we’ll crowdsource author opinions in the comments. You’ll remain anonymous, and any haters will be thrown overboard. Ultimately, I think you’re going to be buoyed up by author love and support as we realize we really are all in the same boat 🛳️