Mid-Month Royalties Not Mammoth, Not Minuscule Either (At Least This Time)

Two surprise royalty statements received/discovered yesterday were greater than the usual pittance the short story writer expects from anthology sales. That is, as one contributor out of a dozen or more (twenty-five, e.g., in the case of 25 GATES OF HELL featured just below), whatever the publisher got for the whole book will have been divided among many authors. Think of a single sardine, for example, dropped in the midst of a school of sharks. But there can be exceptions.

The first one wasn’t so much surprising as unexpected — publishers often will hold actually paying until one’s royalty reaches some semi-worthwhile amount, in some cases ten dollars. The royalty this time actually came to a few dollars more, but was for a large enough number of years I’d completely forgotten there might be one coming. However, it does mean that this was a book with staying power, still finding buyers in this case more than ten years after its initial publication.

As is my practice, for royalty matters I name neither the book/publisher nor the amount to avoid embarrassment on both sides, but the other one (which I discovered quite accidentally, due to PayPal’s long-standing policy of refusing to tell recipients when money is added to their accounts) was for a book published less than half a year ago(!), and is enough to actually pay for a decent dinner, including a cocktail or a glass of wine (though probably not both) if one were so inclined. And for an anthology this is rare, although realistically an early sales spurt will usually not be repeated. But still . . . well, maybe I should keep an eye out if that particular publisher puts out a call for a new anthology — at least if they’re still accepting reprints.