How to Read in Ways That Support Authors

This past week, I posted the below on my Facebook author page. It generated lots of shares and comments and quickly became one of my most-seen posts.

A very kind reader reached out to me in response with this question… “I’ve always wondered if there is a hierarchy of the best ways to support authors. Can you give a breakdown of what is most helpful?”

Today, I’m answering her question! I’m ranking the ways to read that are most helpful to authors by providing insights into the business of publishing.

#1. Buy a copy of the e-book or the print book or the audio book.

Authors who publish via a traditional publishing house earn approximately 5-7.5% if they’re paid on the gross sale price per book or 16-26% if they’re paid on net receipts (profits after all costs and taxes have been paid) per book. That percentage is less for some types of sales, like sales of books that are deeply discounted. To give you a sense of what that looks like for an author, I’ll use my most recent royalty statement as an example. For print book sales of my newest release, Let It Be Me (which has a list price of $16.99), I received $1.13 per book sold. Those of us who have literary agents pay them approximately 15% of that. So I earned about 96 cents per book.

On e-books, traditional authors earn approximately 25% of the net receipts of each e-book sold. For Let It Be Me, I received $1.10 per e-book sold. After paying my agent, that amounted to 93 cents.

On audio books, traditional authors earn approximately 10-25% of the net receipts of each book sold. For my traditionally published novels I’m unsure how much that amounts to in dollars and cents per book because those rights were sold to an audio book producer. My payments show up as a lump sum in my royalty statements without detailing how many units were sold.

With traditional publishing, the house bears the costs of editing, cover design, formatting, marketing, and distribution into book stores and libraries.

Independently published authors earn approximately 30-40% of the print book sale price depending on which platform they choose and how they decide to price the book. For my most recent indie novella, You and Me, I could have set the list price higher than $6.99, but I didn’t want to charge readers more than that for a story that’s one quarter the length of my novels. So I earned 22% of the list price which was $1.54 per print book.

On e-books, independently published authors earn approximately 70% of the sale price (at Amazon, that percentage drops to 35% for e-books priced below $2.99). I priced You and Me at $2.99 and earned $2.06 per copy.

On audio books, independently published authors earn between 25-40% of the sale price. I only have one indie novella audio book, Then Came You. I priced it at $6.95 and made around $1.80 per book sold.

With independent publishing, authors bear the costs of editing, cover design, formatting, paying narrators, marketing. Those costs must be paid back before we earn income. Thus, for example, when I factor in the cost of paying the narrators for Then Came You, my earnings drop from $1.80 per book to 57 cents per book. Paying literary agents typically doesn’t come into play here because agents are not usually involved in independently published projects.

Insider tips…. If you’d like to super-charge the amazing support you’re already giving by investing in books, you can do so three ways. 1) By buying print books at your local independent bookstore. That way, you benefit both the author and a small business owner. 2) By pre-ordering. This is good for readers because you’ll receive the lowest price the book falls to between the time you pre-order and the book’s release. And it’s good for authors because if a book accumulates a lot of pre-orders, it might hit a bestseller list which will make it even more discoverable. 3) By donating your used print books to a charity! Visit this post for a long list of organizations that accept donated books.

#2. Read via Kindle Unlimited.

Once a KU reader reads a certain amount of a traditionally published e-book enrolled in the program, Amazon pays the publisher a set price for that e-book and the author earns 25% of the net receipts. Independently published authors earn between $0.004-$0.005 per page read.

#3. Read via your library.

When a library buys a print book, the author receives a payment on that sale just like she would on a single sale made to an individual reader. With e-books, the library pays either to lend the book out over a specified period of time or to lend the book out a certain number of times. When that limit is reached, they can choose to buy the e-book again. The author earns a payment on those sales. With audio books, I think the library makes a one-time purchase, like with print books. (Librarians, I had a hard time finding information on this, so please correct me if I’m wrong).

While authors don’t make much income on books read through the library, libraries are very helpful to authors because many readers find their new favorite author on library shelves. That reader might then buy other books by that author or they might tell their friends about that author or they might write glowing reviews at online sites or they might share about the book on social media.

#4. Read books loaned to you by friends.

Authors earn no income (except the payment received on the initial sale when it was new) on books loaned between friends. However, there’s no better word of mouth marketing than that of a woman who drops a book by her friend’s house and says, “You have to read this! It’s fabulous.” Just like with library books, readers of loaned books can help authors by spreading the word about books they loved.

#5. Buy used books.

Authors earn no income (except the payment received on the initial sale when it was new) on books sold at used bookstores, flea markets, etc. Just like with library books and loaned books, readers of used books can help authors by spreading the word about books they loved.

I’ll close by mentioning the one actively harmful way to read — via pirated copies. Pirated copies are stolen property. You can be certain that you’re reading/listening to legal copies of books by… 1) Downloading e-books only from reputable online bookstores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, ChristianBook, KOBO, and Google Play). 2) Visiting this page and scrolling down to see a list of reputable outlets for audio books. 3) Reading/listening via your library.

Based on the above information, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that the profession of fiction author is not usually a lucrative one. Like most creative jobs (actor, singer, musician, artist) there are a few famous names at the top who make a great deal of money. But the large majority do not. And we’d have no income whatsoever without you, readers. My heartfelt gratitude goes to those of you who appreciate what we do and who support our work monetarily and via the other methods mentioned in this post.

What are your thoughts? Did any of this information surprise you?