MSI Press Blog

  t is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. This week we look at a couple of troubling situations  we recently encountered. In a familiar but frustrating scenario, one of our titles, listed at $16.95, was suddenly selling on Amazon for $23.25—a 37% markup. Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble continued to list the book at the correct price. The author, understandably, was concerned: he wanted to email his large mailing list with a launch announcement, but linking to Amazon risked alienating readers with sticker shock. Why the price change? At the same time, we had an author whose book usually retails for $24.95 who suddenly found it selling for $10. This made it difficult for her to sell ...

  It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  Today's post addresses the topic of royalties. I suppose that topic was conditioned by the fact that the first quarter of the year is when MSI Press calculates royalties for the past year and gets ready to pay them out to authors. Of course, royalty issues should have been sorted out before a contract was signed, but if one is still pending, and for the future, perhaps some of the information here will help. Kinds of Royalties Royalties can be calculated on list or net. Royalties calculated on list are pretty easy to figure. It is generally a percentage of the selling price of the book, regardless of costs encountered in producing and m...