Author Royalties

Unlike many companies that publish books and take a percentage of an author’s royalties, Certa Publishing believes authors should own all the rights to their books and receive 100% of their royalties! After all, you did the hard work, so you should enjoy 100% of the reward for your efforts.

Some publishing companies push you to set an artificially high retail sales price, to “support” giving you a larger royalty check. But if a company sets an unrealistic sales price on your book to make your royalty payments more attractive, you could soon discover that your book sales have fallen short of your expectations, because the retail price of your book was too high.

Think about it. If you can buy any product, including books, at a significantly lower price, then you do exactly that. Everyone else does, too. So don’t over price your book and sacrifice volume sales for a few inflated royalty checks. Instead, set your price with the goal of getting your book into the hands of the most people possible, and let widespread sales drive up your royalties!

Acceptable formulas vary on setting retail prices, but they range from 2.2 times the printing costs to significantly higher percentages. If you are writing a novel, then you have to realize that market prices for novels are lower than for other books, which means you likely should stay on the low end of the scale, at 2.2. If, on the other hand, you are writing a business book, it’s a fact that business people will pay more. So although your business book may cost only $2.78 per copy to print, you could end up charging and getting $19 to $28 per copy. Obviously, that multiple is significantly different.

Various book distribution outlets and channels may take 25% to 65% of the retail price to sell your book. This is why we suggest that you use a multiple of at least 2.2 times the cost of printing your book when setting your book retail selling price.