This is a great breakdown of realistic numbers, and one addendum I’d make: you get royalties primarily on hardcovers, paperbacks, and ebooks. But publishers don’t keep every book in print indefinitely, so odds are eventually those hardback and paperback royalty streams close.

Pprisonculture.bsky.socialOct 4, 2024 10:52pm

It was generous for this author to break this down and to be transparent because the publishing industry is NOT transparent and people trying to publish books are in the dark about everything. monicacatherine.com/2024/05/16/q...

Q: Can an author make a living from royalties?

~ free public post ~ The general population is slowly getting the message that things are really hard for traditionally published authors right now, in ways it was not hard twenty or even five year…

UPDATE: THE DOCKWORKERS WON Per AP, More Perfect, Labor Notes: Shippers agreed to a 61.5% wage increase over 6 years, details still being negotiated, but current contract will be extended to January 15th while they working it out. Some reports there's also an agreement on automation.

I appreciate that the general consensus on here is that we’re all a lot more casual with the block button because it lets me feel zero regret preemptively blocking obvious debate perverts in other people’s mundane posts

Happy October 3 to everyone celebrating

Exactly. It just betrays an enormous and mean-spirited ignorance about the industry.

Tl;dr YA literature is not keeping you from getting an agent or selling your work, booboo. Pull your head out of 2014 and go work on your opening pages.

Adult is also getting paid *more* across the board. This graph uses publishing jargon to codify deal amounts, but Good = $100k-$249k, Significant = $250-$499k, Major = $500k+. You can see how few of those deals are going to Children’s, again, compared to Adult Fiction/Nonfic.

As of the second quarter of 2024, Adult Fiction and Nonfiction are each solidly outpacing the *entirety* of deals for Children’s books, of which, again, YA is a subset.

And I don’t mean that anecdotally. Per the Association of American Publishers, in 2023, Adult Fiction sales alone comprised more of the trade market (35.6%) than the entirety of Children’s Fiction and Nonfiction combined (29.3%). YA is a subset of the Children’s sales.

Every time I see an edgelord sneering about YA I just want to cradle their face in my hands and tell them with utmost compassion that YA is not why their work is being rejected