About Us
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Sarah Bullen is founder of The Writing Room and Kent Literary Agency. She is a multi-published author, international writing coach and literary agent. For 17 years as founder of The Writing Room she has been mentoring authors to share and tell their stories, and has well over 100 of her writers with books published. Sarah has worked with authors and publishers for over 17 years as an international writing coach and agent. Sarah is a frequent guest on talk shows and literary festivals. Sarah was also the former personal finance editor at the Mail & Guardian, radio news editor at Business Day radio and had a 10 year career as a magazine publisher and editor before moving into the world of books.
She has an interest in celebrity memoir, non fiction and memoir. |
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Publishing Overview and Literary Agent Fees: what you need to know
A literary agent is the individual responsible for managing an author’s career, including helping them to develop their work and selling their book to publishers by negotiating the best deal.
Agents also facilitate the initial relationship between an author and their editor. In return, agents take a percentage of an author’s advance and royalties.
Literary agent fees
Typical commissions are 15%-20% of all sales made in home markets,
20% on overseas sales and for sales of film & TV rights.
Some agents may vary from this, but these rates are increasingly standard.
So, for example, if you’re a Brit and you sell a book to a UK publisher for £10,000 and to a US publisher for $25,000, then your agent will take 15% of £10K (ie: £1,500) and 20% of that $25K (ie: $5K). There would also be fees for any foreign language sales and for film/TV sales.
If you do not get an advance the 15-20% is calculated against your sales and is based on the quoted wholesale or trade price of the book.
Royalties
When you sell a book to a publisher, you sell it for an advance against royalties. So let’s say you sell your manuscript to a publisher for £10,000, but that book goes on to be a bestseller. Once your royalties have ‘earned out’ that initial advance, you’ll start to be entitled to six-monthly royalty cheques, depending on sales. Your literary agent is also entitled to their fees on those earnings.
If you move on
If you decide to fire your agent, or otherwise move on, then your agent is still entitled to any commission due following deals that they signed with you. And that makes sense. If you get rich because of a deal done by your agent, then your agent should be entitled to his/her share of the fruits of that deal, no matter how far down the road. Even decades.
Are literary agents worth their fees?
Yes. A massive yes to that. A good agent will do the following for you:
make sure that your manuscript is right for the market. That may mean that you need to tweak the book, but those tweaks are intended to get it just right for publishers in today’s market.
approach the right editors at the right publishing houses. That means having impeccable contacts and staying very current
run a proper auction. – that’s the salesy bit of their job, and most agents are very good at it.
negotiate a proper contract. Publishing contracts today are typically 12-20 pages long (in the UK and US; European ones are shorter).
How do authors (that’s you) get paid?
At the very simplest, every author is paid a portion of the sale of each copy of their book(s). This portion is called a royalty.
Authors are paid in two ways – through an advance, which is a sum of money paid upfront when you sign a contract with a publisher, and through royalties. Royalties are the amount of money paid to an author for each book sold, which will usually be a percentage of the book’s sale price.
Most authors will need to ‘earn out’ their advance before they start receiving royalties directly from book sales. This means that the payments they would have received from sales of their book (royalties) are equal to their advance, before they start directly receiving royalties.
The advance and royalty payments differ significantly from book to book – between 5% - 18% - but are ultimately based on how many copies we believe we can sell based on different factors, including the wider book market.
There are many other ways for authors to make a living in addition to the advance and royalties they receive from their publisher. This can include selling the rights for your book to be made into a TV programme or film, selling the rights for it to be translated into other languages, making school visits, appearing at literary festivals and events, and tutoring or mentoring other writers. Many published authors also have additional careers and income streams in other industries alongside their writing.
Some publishers don’t pay advances, and authors only get royalties. Others pay only advances (in this case, called a ‘flat fee’) and not royalties.
Some books never sell enough copies to earn back the advance, so the author never receives royalties. (In this case, the author doesn’t have to pay back the advance. It’s the publisher’s loss. But the publishers probably won’t publish more books by that author.)
In addition, many authors these days are their own publishers, because modern technology (ebooks, print-on-demand, online sales) make this possible. This is called ‘self-publishing’ or ‘indie publishing’. Indie authors don’t get advances. They get paid royalties for each book sold. The royalties are paid by the distributor (for example, Amazon). The royalties per book sold are much higher than those paid by a publisher.
How do you earn?
Some royalties are based on a percentage of the book's cover price, some are a flat dollar amount, some are a percentage of the net receipts, some have steps and scales. Each one is negotiated differently, and depends on your platform, reputation, experience, and the publisher you're dealing with.
A typical contract involves an advance against royalties. Say your royalty works out to $1 a book and you get a $5,000 royalty. That means you won't get anything for the first 5,000 books sold, because you've already been paid for those.
How do you work out what royalties you will make?
Royalties are always calculated on revenue, not cover price. A publisher will never sell for the cover price, but rather at a discount rate depending on who the retailer is. So for physical bookstores, they usually sell to the store at 50-60% discount, and the royalty the author receives is taken from that. Online stores may be given as little as 25% discount. When a publisher sells from their own website, the amount you receive in royalties is greater because they cut out the middle man and receive closer to the cover price of the book.
Let's do an example.
Book cover price at a shop: $20
The retailer buys it at 50% discount: $10
Revenue that your publisher receives: $10
Your royalty at 10%: $1
Your agent’s cut at 20%: 20c
So royalties are calculated on sales revenue, not cover price.
It is very important to keep in mind that as a writer, you are self-employed. You are not an employee of the publisher who takes you on. You are an independent contractor who creates product that the publisher will then distribute.
Traditionally Published Authors
Initially you are paid an Advance. As the name implies, an advance is an advance royalty payment ahead of sales of your book. The publisher knows you have to put food on the table, make bill payments, buy clothes, etc., while you work on your second book. So they give you a check based on their estimate of how many copies they figure your book will sell at the least. Most publishers are pretty good at estimating this.
Then your book is released. Because you were already paid an advance on the first X,000 copies to be sold, you won’t receive any royalty payments until your book sells copy X,001. If your book proves to be popular and it actually reaches that point, it will have earned out. This means it sold enough copies to generate enough returns that it covered the advance royalty they paid you at the beginning.
Now you start receiving royalty payments. Most authors expect to be paid quarterly by their publishers. (Again, this schedule depends on your contract with the publisher.) So, every quarter, you will receive a check for all the royalties your book earned during the previous quarter.
What you are paid depends on the contract and the agreed rate with the publisher. A really good rate is 15% of the net profit. Keep in mind, that is not 15% of the list price of the book, it is 15% of the net profit from the wholesaleprice. That means you are getting roughly 3% of the list price of the book. Again, it depends on what is in the contract. If you don’t understand those numbers, I strongly suggest you do some studying about how retail sales work and the book sales industry.
Independent Authors (Self-published)
YOU are the publisher on top of being the author. Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and others are NOT your publisher. They are retailers. Do not allow yourself to be confused!
Depending on the terms the retailer offers, your royalty is a portion of the list price you set. The most common format that books are sold by independent authors is the ebook.
For ebooks, most often this royalty share is 70%. (Some retailers charge “delivery fees” that drop this to 68%. Some only charge 65% share. Pay attention to their terms before you jump in.)
So, if you set your ebook to be sold at $4.99 and your share is 70%, then your royalty for each copy sold will be $3.49.
Most retailers pay out royalties 60 days from the close of the sales month. This means if you sold 1,000 copies in January, then you will receive a check for the sales proceeds on April 1st.
If you choose to make your book available in print through Print On Demand (POD) services, your share of the sales proceeds will be much smaller than 70% because the retailer is assuming the costs of paper, ink, energy, and maintenance on the machine that does the printing towards printing your book. Whatever is left over is the net profit, and you will get a share of that.
Before you get too excited looking at 70% vs. 3% of the list price, self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, keep in mind that as an independent author, you are the publisher!!!!
This means that you have to front all the costs of producing your manuscript by paying for editing, cover art, advertising, and any other costs that come up related to production of a manuscript and distribution of your book. Plus, you will in no way sell as many copies as an independent as will a publishing company. You just don’t have all the contacts and channels that a trade publisher has. You can build up these contacts and networks over time, especially if you turn out to be a popular author. But a publisher has these already in place. It will take you years to reach that point.
Self-publishing is a marathon, not a sprint. If you don’t have the wherewithal to stick it out for several years of work before seeing meaningful returns, it is best you take the easier route and find a publisher to take you on.
Agents also facilitate the initial relationship between an author and their editor. In return, agents take a percentage of an author’s advance and royalties.
Literary agent fees
Typical commissions are 15%-20% of all sales made in home markets,
20% on overseas sales and for sales of film & TV rights.
Some agents may vary from this, but these rates are increasingly standard.
So, for example, if you’re a Brit and you sell a book to a UK publisher for £10,000 and to a US publisher for $25,000, then your agent will take 15% of £10K (ie: £1,500) and 20% of that $25K (ie: $5K). There would also be fees for any foreign language sales and for film/TV sales.
If you do not get an advance the 15-20% is calculated against your sales and is based on the quoted wholesale or trade price of the book.
Royalties
When you sell a book to a publisher, you sell it for an advance against royalties. So let’s say you sell your manuscript to a publisher for £10,000, but that book goes on to be a bestseller. Once your royalties have ‘earned out’ that initial advance, you’ll start to be entitled to six-monthly royalty cheques, depending on sales. Your literary agent is also entitled to their fees on those earnings.
If you move on
If you decide to fire your agent, or otherwise move on, then your agent is still entitled to any commission due following deals that they signed with you. And that makes sense. If you get rich because of a deal done by your agent, then your agent should be entitled to his/her share of the fruits of that deal, no matter how far down the road. Even decades.
Are literary agents worth their fees?
Yes. A massive yes to that. A good agent will do the following for you:
make sure that your manuscript is right for the market. That may mean that you need to tweak the book, but those tweaks are intended to get it just right for publishers in today’s market.
approach the right editors at the right publishing houses. That means having impeccable contacts and staying very current
run a proper auction. – that’s the salesy bit of their job, and most agents are very good at it.
negotiate a proper contract. Publishing contracts today are typically 12-20 pages long (in the UK and US; European ones are shorter).
How do authors (that’s you) get paid?
At the very simplest, every author is paid a portion of the sale of each copy of their book(s). This portion is called a royalty.
Authors are paid in two ways – through an advance, which is a sum of money paid upfront when you sign a contract with a publisher, and through royalties. Royalties are the amount of money paid to an author for each book sold, which will usually be a percentage of the book’s sale price.
Most authors will need to ‘earn out’ their advance before they start receiving royalties directly from book sales. This means that the payments they would have received from sales of their book (royalties) are equal to their advance, before they start directly receiving royalties.
The advance and royalty payments differ significantly from book to book – between 5% - 18% - but are ultimately based on how many copies we believe we can sell based on different factors, including the wider book market.
There are many other ways for authors to make a living in addition to the advance and royalties they receive from their publisher. This can include selling the rights for your book to be made into a TV programme or film, selling the rights for it to be translated into other languages, making school visits, appearing at literary festivals and events, and tutoring or mentoring other writers. Many published authors also have additional careers and income streams in other industries alongside their writing.
Some publishers don’t pay advances, and authors only get royalties. Others pay only advances (in this case, called a ‘flat fee’) and not royalties.
Some books never sell enough copies to earn back the advance, so the author never receives royalties. (In this case, the author doesn’t have to pay back the advance. It’s the publisher’s loss. But the publishers probably won’t publish more books by that author.)
In addition, many authors these days are their own publishers, because modern technology (ebooks, print-on-demand, online sales) make this possible. This is called ‘self-publishing’ or ‘indie publishing’. Indie authors don’t get advances. They get paid royalties for each book sold. The royalties are paid by the distributor (for example, Amazon). The royalties per book sold are much higher than those paid by a publisher.
How do you earn?
Some royalties are based on a percentage of the book's cover price, some are a flat dollar amount, some are a percentage of the net receipts, some have steps and scales. Each one is negotiated differently, and depends on your platform, reputation, experience, and the publisher you're dealing with.
A typical contract involves an advance against royalties. Say your royalty works out to $1 a book and you get a $5,000 royalty. That means you won't get anything for the first 5,000 books sold, because you've already been paid for those.
How do you work out what royalties you will make?
Royalties are always calculated on revenue, not cover price. A publisher will never sell for the cover price, but rather at a discount rate depending on who the retailer is. So for physical bookstores, they usually sell to the store at 50-60% discount, and the royalty the author receives is taken from that. Online stores may be given as little as 25% discount. When a publisher sells from their own website, the amount you receive in royalties is greater because they cut out the middle man and receive closer to the cover price of the book.
Let's do an example.
Book cover price at a shop: $20
The retailer buys it at 50% discount: $10
Revenue that your publisher receives: $10
Your royalty at 10%: $1
Your agent’s cut at 20%: 20c
So royalties are calculated on sales revenue, not cover price.
It is very important to keep in mind that as a writer, you are self-employed. You are not an employee of the publisher who takes you on. You are an independent contractor who creates product that the publisher will then distribute.
Traditionally Published Authors
Initially you are paid an Advance. As the name implies, an advance is an advance royalty payment ahead of sales of your book. The publisher knows you have to put food on the table, make bill payments, buy clothes, etc., while you work on your second book. So they give you a check based on their estimate of how many copies they figure your book will sell at the least. Most publishers are pretty good at estimating this.
Then your book is released. Because you were already paid an advance on the first X,000 copies to be sold, you won’t receive any royalty payments until your book sells copy X,001. If your book proves to be popular and it actually reaches that point, it will have earned out. This means it sold enough copies to generate enough returns that it covered the advance royalty they paid you at the beginning.
Now you start receiving royalty payments. Most authors expect to be paid quarterly by their publishers. (Again, this schedule depends on your contract with the publisher.) So, every quarter, you will receive a check for all the royalties your book earned during the previous quarter.
What you are paid depends on the contract and the agreed rate with the publisher. A really good rate is 15% of the net profit. Keep in mind, that is not 15% of the list price of the book, it is 15% of the net profit from the wholesaleprice. That means you are getting roughly 3% of the list price of the book. Again, it depends on what is in the contract. If you don’t understand those numbers, I strongly suggest you do some studying about how retail sales work and the book sales industry.
Independent Authors (Self-published)
YOU are the publisher on top of being the author. Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and others are NOT your publisher. They are retailers. Do not allow yourself to be confused!
Depending on the terms the retailer offers, your royalty is a portion of the list price you set. The most common format that books are sold by independent authors is the ebook.
For ebooks, most often this royalty share is 70%. (Some retailers charge “delivery fees” that drop this to 68%. Some only charge 65% share. Pay attention to their terms before you jump in.)
So, if you set your ebook to be sold at $4.99 and your share is 70%, then your royalty for each copy sold will be $3.49.
Most retailers pay out royalties 60 days from the close of the sales month. This means if you sold 1,000 copies in January, then you will receive a check for the sales proceeds on April 1st.
If you choose to make your book available in print through Print On Demand (POD) services, your share of the sales proceeds will be much smaller than 70% because the retailer is assuming the costs of paper, ink, energy, and maintenance on the machine that does the printing towards printing your book. Whatever is left over is the net profit, and you will get a share of that.
Before you get too excited looking at 70% vs. 3% of the list price, self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, keep in mind that as an independent author, you are the publisher!!!!
This means that you have to front all the costs of producing your manuscript by paying for editing, cover art, advertising, and any other costs that come up related to production of a manuscript and distribution of your book. Plus, you will in no way sell as many copies as an independent as will a publishing company. You just don’t have all the contacts and channels that a trade publisher has. You can build up these contacts and networks over time, especially if you turn out to be a popular author. But a publisher has these already in place. It will take you years to reach that point.
Self-publishing is a marathon, not a sprint. If you don’t have the wherewithal to stick it out for several years of work before seeing meaningful returns, it is best you take the easier route and find a publisher to take you on.
