#the poll is also on X (Twitter) so let's see if there's different winner on each site

[setzeri]

Christmas is nearing in WWII era Finland and these Lotta Svärd volunteers have to spend the holidays on the field. Each one has asked for your help with the upcoming night shift on Christmas Eve

[literaticat]

What's the typical life cycle of a published book for children (i.e. how long can the average author expect to earn royalties)? Also, sales figures for kidlit fiction and nonfiction are hard to come by. Can you give us some idea what's considered average, lackluster, and outstanding for these genres. I'd expect that sales figures for nonfiction are often lower than fiction. Thanks!

I may be put in Agent Jail for revealing the following secrets, but since you have asked twice I guess I have no choice. Bear with me, this answer is lengthy, probably unsatisfying, and involves math. 

As to the life-cycle – well, most books that are successful kind of peak in the first year, peak again in paperback the following year, then chug along for a couple/few years as long as they are on school lists and whatnot, then drop off. (That is, of course, except for all the MYRIAD examples I could also give of the exact opposite happening, or something entirely different!) – The best thing you can do for your current books? Is write more books. I have seen consistently that when authors have a new book out, all their book sales spike. 

BUT ACTUALLY! The premise of your question is flawed. You ask, “How long can the average author expect to earn royalties” – but the thing is, the average author may not ever earn royalties at all. I’m not going to say MOST books never earn out… but uh… *cough*… let’s just say… MANY books never earn out. I did a quick little unscientific poll on my twitter, and so far with 200-ish votes, 51% of respondents say their book has not earned out a year after publication, and 40% say that they are barely or almost-but-not-quite earned out, or earning what they consider very modest royalties. 9% so far say they are in the “woohoo!” royalty range. 

The thing is. The THING is. There isn’t really such a thing as an “average” author. I know many best-selling and famous authors, whose names you Absolutely know… and even they, for sure, still have some books that have never earned out. I know what you might consider mid-list or even “lesser known” authors that make a fine living, whose books sell consistently over years, though they may never be NYT bestsellers. I know debuts who have hit the jackpot but then never sold another book. And people who never sold books for years and then went on to hit the jackpot. Every author, and indeed every book, has its own path. (That’s the problem with my quick-and-dirty twitter poll - obviously there is no room for nuance, and everyone’s story is different!)

The OTHER thing is: Publishing is really not a science. Publishers are gambling alllllll the time. They may pretend like they know exactly what will be popular, but of course the REASON so many books do just meh or poorly is, heads up, Publishers have no clue. They pay for 100 books knowing at least half of them won’t necessarily go anywhere at all – the big financial wins (known bestsellers, out-of-nowhere surprises, hot topics, award winners, celebrity books) pay for the others to exist. 

The other OTHER thing is (I’m sorry, and I did warn you): It’s all subjective, isn’t it? Like, what is successful? That entirely depends on the situation. If you got a $10,000 advance and sold, say, 20,000 copies in the first year, you’re earning royalties, and got on some state lists and your book stays in print for ages? That’s VERY successful. If you got a $500,000. advance and your book sold 20,000 copies… that is not good at all. To a smaller press, 5,000 copies might be a success – to a huge press it would probably rank as “quite meh.” 

So here comes the maths – and again, these are SECRET MATHS, don’t tell anyone! I’m burying this info so low in the post that probably nobody will get to it but YOU! Shhhh! Anyway:

When publishers are doing a P&L (that is a “profit and loss statement”), they plug in some numbers to kind of back-of-the-envelope try and figure out how much to offer as an advance. The calculation goes something like: 

price of book x number we can reasonably expect to sell in the first year which let’s face it is totally guesswork x royalty %

In other words: If your book is going to be a $17.99 hardcover, and it is about a very niche nonfiction topic and they want to start with a very modest print run of 5,000 or so, and your royalty is 10%, the math looks like: 17.99 x 5,000 x .10 = $8,995. I would expect that the budget for the advance would be under 10k – they’d probably offer 7,500. and your agent could prob talk them up to $10k.

If your book is going to be a big ol YA $18.99 hardcover and the publisher thinks it could be potentially a bestseller and they want to start with a print run of 50,000+ in hardcover – you’re looking at more the near-six-figure range for an advance. However, a paperback original at an $8.99 price point and a 6% royalty would have to sell that many copies to justify a $25,000 advance.

SO. Now that you know that math – you can also do the calculations backward and see what kind of expectations the publisher might have.

(Note that this ONLY works provided the publisher is a traditional publisher of traditional size and means – obviously for a micro-press or something like that, their financials will be different).

If you know the advance, the price of the book, and the royalty, divide them all, and you will get approximately what the publisher expects to sell in the first year or so.  So that first niche nonfiction book? $10,000 / 17.99 / .10 = 5,558, aka they are hoping/anticipating you sell 5-6k copies at least.* 

But of course remember - the publisher starts making money BEFORE you do. So don’t cry for them. Also, even if a book performs “just ok” in bookstores – they (and by extension, you) might make money off it with subsidiary rights and such, Junior Library Guild, book fairs, foreign rights where applicable, etc etc forever, anyway. So you could earn royalties and be considered a success, even if the book doesn’t sell like gangbusters at the bookstore.  

And THAT is why my answer to your question is, *enigmatic shrug* – and if you got THIS far, I salute you! I really could keep going for another 50 paragraphs, but I’m stopping now. BYE!

(*ETA this of course doesn’t count the fact that publishing doesn’t always make sense, and sometimes publishers are struck by MADNESS and way under-or-overpay due to some factors that are completely out of your control despite what reasonable numbers would be, and everything is wildly unpredictable and nobody knows anything, soooo….)

[hpreadathon2017-blog]

MID GOF WEEK UPDATE

So..... we had a very, very, very eventful weekend. Let’s do a quick recap.

1. Saturday, 10th June, 10am GMT: The Visual Arts Club Meeting (#HPRArt)

The topic of this meeting was “moving paintings”, and to begin with, readathoners were shown the wand movement and incantation of the spell to make paintings move (”pictura ad vitam”, which is Latin for “picture to life”). They were then asked to help fill Hogwarts’ bare walls with their art - and they only had 60 minutes to do it! 24 people rose to the occasion and submitted their art pieces to us, and unbeknownst to them, we got our animator, Lara, to animate the drawings to make them move! Here are some:

You can view the rest on Twitter, where we did a display of all the artwork submitted. We’re so so pleased with how these turned out, and we hope you guys like them too!

2. Saturday, 10th June, 2pm GMT: The Wizard Card Collectors’ Club Meeting (#HPRWCCC)

So, this turned out to be a very long and hilarious meeting. It lasted three hours - and our loyal readathoners stuck with us the whole way through (thank you all!!!!!). Throughout the week, we had tweeted out chocolate frog cards to active readathoners, so everyone had their own cards when we began this meeting. It started off with us tweeting a thread of polls in which everyone could vote for points. This was because we were holding a lottery - anyone could win. The points that people voted for would be how many points the winning card gets. 

As that was going on, we began the first part of the quiz. This was fun because anyone could answer, but the original owner of the winning card would get some points as well. We (well, I, Tan) absolutely lost it after the first question, however, because of this:

This has now become a readathon in-joke 😅, and it’s fantastic! We love it so much! Autocorrect went on to thwart a lot of us later on as well (even us at HPR!), and we all had a good time mocking each other on our little typos.

The third phase of the meeting was to collect and trade cards with other people. This was so intense that we added extra time on! While everyone was accumulating cards, we at HPR were frantically trying to go through the tag to see who was trading what so that we could write the quiz questions for the next phase 😂 it was a struggle, not going to lie.

The last phase was the second part of the quiz, which was a free for all. It differed from the first quiz because readathoners had to reply with a chocolate frog card, instead of a text answer. This made things a little more difficult because if they had not collected the card, they couldn’t answer. Also, searching through the camera roll looking for the answer would be hectic af, but our readathoners did an AWESOME job with it. Pat on the back to you guys.

After the quiz, we pulled random cards out of a jar and the lottery winners claimed their points (all ranging from 400-900 points). It was really interesting to see how everyone voted for the points - the jackpot of 1000 points was up for grabs in all of them, and yet, no one got the jackpot.

3. Sunday 11th June, 11am GMT: The Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw Quidditch Match (#HPRQuidditch)

This was wild. We had animals out on the pitch, breakfast sausages thrown to distract players, intense scoring and a spectacular catch of the Golden Snitch. If you want a good (and very random) read, we highly recommend checking out the hashtag (link above), as we don’t think we could summarise the match succinctly. It has to be appreciated in its full glory. Gryffindor won the match, by the way, so they will get to go on to the Final. Ravenclaw will get a chance to play again later as well. The next match, however, is happening in two weeks’ time, and will be between Hufflepuff and Slytherin.

Whew that was longer than we had intended...oops. Thanks for reading.

We look forward to reading the rest of Goblet this week, as well as completing all the Hufflepuff Pride challenges (Pride week ends on Wednesday!) and seeing all the schools you guys create for this book’s challenge.

The HPReadathon Team x