Our policy

We pay you 60% net revenue of the retail sales of your book and additionally you can buy as few or as many books directly from us to sell yourself as you require.

Earning from retail sales

When your book is sold via a retail outlet, i.e. A high street bookshop (store) or Internet site such as Amazon, various expenses are taken along the way before you receive your royalty cheque. These breakdown into, the wholesale bookseller discount of around 40% of the cover price (5% to the wholesaler/distributor and 35% to the bookseller) and the printing costs of each copy, which, dependent on the size of the book start at 1p per page of black and white text and/or illustration + 70p for the four colour cover.

Example:

A book any size from 5" X 8" (127mm X 203mm) to 6.14" X 9.21" (156mm X 234mm) with say 180 pages will cost £2.50 per copy to produce (180 pages of text X 1p + 70p for the cover = £2.50)

If we decide between us (The author and Authors OnLine), to sell that book for a cover price of say £10.00 the wholesale bookseller discount is traditionally 40%, so we sell it to the book trade for £6.00

Then if we take away the print costs of £2.50 we are left with £3.50, of which we pay you 60% i.e. £2.10. The remaining 40% covers our costs in dealing with the transaction and of course our profit. You do not have any paperwork to do except file your tax return!

Here is the same example in table form.

We also print our books for sale in North America. The same principal applies except the cost of printing each copy is $0.013 per page of text + $0.90 for the cover. The cover price is of course also in USD, and in our £10.00 example above would be approximately $15.00.

When do I get paid?

The bookseller trade traditionally pays 90 days in arrears. In other words we receive payment 90 days following the month in which the sales is make. So we pay you your first commission cheque 6 months after you have published and quarterly thereafter.

Earning by purchasing books directly from Authors OnLine

Most authors will want to sell their books privately, so we supply copies at print costs + 25% (20% for enhanced service authors) of the retail cover price. This is designed so that the author can make approximately double our profit. Using the above example again, the author would buy the books at a print cost of £2.50 + 25% of the retail cover price of £10.00 (£2.50) i.e. £5.00. If they are then sold for the cover price of £10.00 the profit is £5.00 per copy. But of course the author can sell them for any price they want, as I hasten to add can any bookstore.

N.B. However authors should be aware that they will also incur the cost of packing and postage, which has not be taken into account with this example, and depends on volumes ordered and the prevailing postal rates of the carrier.

How many copies can I buy?

There is no minimum on the number of books you can purchase, but obviously the higher the number you order the smaller will be the ratio of packing and postage costs. All orders over £100 are delivered free of charge to mainland UK addresses

Are there any volume discounts

General speaking the print costs per book do not get any less with increased volume orders, but occasionally our printers do have special offers.

Warning!

Authors should be aware that having a book available through the book trade does not guarantee sales. Books require marketing and a book's success will in most instances be down to the authors own efforts, marketing skills and a great deal of luck. Authors OnLine does not wish to give any potential author unrealistic expectations as to earnings.