What do authors make on books?

[Riddick]

When Joe Schmoe wins the WSOP or gets really well known somehow and gets a contract for a book, what kind of money are we talking about here?

Also, how much goes to the publisher and how much to the author?

[smbruin22]

curious too, but so many books now and many of these smaller mass market books are pretty fluffy.

i was wondering something related. can you write a book (hopefully well done; and something unique about it?) to enhance your image? not sure exactly where it will take you but i'm sort of shocked by all these poker celebrities on TV (although my guess is most reputations were made before the WSOP had 6,000 entrants or the person got very, very lucky)

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Riddick:

Most make very little. Ours do quite well.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Some Pig]

How do you define "very little"?

[Uncle Wimp]

More importantly, how do you define "quite well?" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Matt Ruff]

[ QUOTE ]
When Joe Schmoe wins the WSOP or gets really well known somehow and gets a contract for a book, what kind of money are we talking about here?

Also, how much goes to the publisher and how much to the author?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know about non-fiction, but the author royalty rate for novels is generally somewhere between 5% and 10% of the cover price -- so, a buck or two per book. (The publisher doesn't get to keep all the rest -- distributors and bookstores both take a cut, and then there are the production costs).

[KudzuKing]

About a buck a book I bet. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[JaredL]

Mason,

Do you know how well books sell like the OP describes? Just curious how, say, Moneymaker's book or other similar books which are mostly fluff and seem to be hastily written (allegedly) autobiographies about players who have won a big event or are tv pros do. I'm referring to those that have very little strategy content (regardless of its quality) nor more serious biography books but those whose marketing seems to rely heavily on the fame of the author.

Perhaps you have no more information than we do as you've yet to sell such a book I'm just curious how those types of books would sell in comparison with strategy books like yours or Kill Phil for example. Is there any sort of market of people that don't really care about strategy but for soem reason are interested in watching poker on tv or reading about the lives of these famous people?

[uDevil]

I tried looking for an online list of books sales and failed. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

But I did find this moderately interesting article [quoted in part only]:

[ QUOTE ]
Can physics help explain what makes a book a best seller?
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Yes, says UCLA physicist and complex systems theorist Didier Sornette, who used statistical physics and mathematics to analyze 138 books that made Amazon.com's best-seller list between 1997 and April 2004. His team's initial results are published in Physical Review Letters Nov. 26.
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Best-selling books typically reach their sales peaks in one of two ways. The less potent way is by what Sornette calls an "exogenous shock," which is brief and abrupt.
.
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Sales are typically greater, however, when a book benefits from what Sornette calls an "endogenous shock," which progressively accelerates over time, and is illustrated in the book business by favorable word-of-mouth. Such books rise slowly, but the sales results are more enduring, and the decline in sales is slower and more much gradual, he found.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think 2+2's favored strategy is pretty clear.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Jared:

Go to Amazon.com and you can look at the sales ranks of each book. For example at this moment Harrington: Volume I has a sales rank of 89 and Moneymaker has a sales rank of 171,316. Plus the Harrington book has been available for three months longer. So my guess is that the Moneymaker book is a flop or at least a flop by our standards.

It's my opinion that the autobiography books that only touch on strategy are basically as you describe -- worthless, and we have no interest in doing them. But there certainly are a lot of them coming out.

best wishes,
Mason