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One time, after sending out a newsletter to promote the paperback release of We Are The Luckiest, I received the following response:
Why are you pushing your book so hard??? Wouldn’t you rather have it be successful more organically?
Another said:
This feels weird. You’re already a bestselling writer, and I already bought the book once.
I mean, fair enough. I never asked anyone to buy it again, or maybe I did? Or I hoped they would? Either way, my point is, being a “bestselling”1 author doesn’t mean what most people think it does.
These messages track with many others I’ve seen over the years, which point to the widespread myths that 1) books sell well and practically on their own, like bottled water, and 2) authors, especially “bestselling” ones, are rolling in it.
Sure, some authors are rolling in it, and I love that. Most, however, are not. The disparity is crazy. As Cheryl Strayed commented in an interview about authors and pay in 2017, “There’s no other job in the world where you get your master’s degree in that field, and you’re like, Well, I might make zero, or I might make $5 million! We don’t have any standards in that way, and we probably never will.”
I’m writing this piece to address the myths above by explaining the reality of book publishing for most authors, and using my book deal and earnings for We Are The Luckiest as an example.
I’ve taken more time writing this piece than I have with any other because talking about money can be squirmy as it is, but among authors, it’s nearly taboo. And while that makes sense given the landscape, I find all the secretiveness only makes it harder, more isolating, and more anxiety-producing than it already is.
Also, in a roundabout way, I hope to convey how stupidly valuable books are given the time and work that go into them. Books cost, on average, between $5 and $30, yet they take years to produce. I spent four years developing, writing, and editing the material for WATL. This isn’t uncommon; many books take even longer. All that work for the cost of a fancy coffee, one month of Netflix, or dinner at Chipotle (gross).
Of that $5-$30, the author sees very little. On average, 10-15%. of what amounts to, as you’ll see, a relatively small number of total copies sold over the book’s lifetime.
I want readers to know this stuff, so they understand (or at least don’t get so annoyed!) when an author asks them to preorder their book for the 64th time. Maybe they’ll even see books and the work authors do a bit differently; I know I did.
Lastly, everything I’m saying here applies only to traditional publishing. Traditional publishing is when a publisher like Random House, Simon & Schuster, or any number of smaller publishers offers the author a contract to print, publish, and distribute their book. The publisher buys the right to publish the book and pays the author royalties from the sales. Hybrid and self-publishing are different animals, and most or none of this would apply.
How Book Deals Work: Advances, Earn-outs, and Royalties
Book contracts include two primary parts: an advance and a royalty structure.
The advance is a sum of money given to the author to write the book, paid in installments upon hitting certain milestones. The most common milestones are contract signing, manuscript acceptance (when the publisher decides the manuscript is in good enough shape to go to copyedits), publication date, and one year from publication date. When you hear someone say they got a “six-figure book deal,” they’re referring to the advance. There is no average advance for a debut book (or a second or third, for that matter). I’ve heard of $500 advances, $200,000 advances, $1.5 million advances, and everywhere in between—including no advance at all.
The royalties are the profits the author earns from book sales (the 10-15% average I mentioned above). Authors receive royalties only when they’ve “earned out” their advance money in book royalties. So, for example, for a $10,000 advance, if the author is making 10% in royalties, or $1 per book, they would need to sell 10,000 copies of the book to “earn out” their advance, and then they’d begin to receive royalty checks.
Do most authors earn out their advances? No.
I’ve seen different statistics, but they all seem to land around 70-80%, meaning 70-80% of authors never earn out their advances. Meaning most authors never see a royalty check.
Do authors have to pay back the advance if they don’t earn it out? No.
There are several other points in a book deal, including territories, foreign and subsidiary rights, bonus payments, marketing and promotion agreements, and more. I’m not going to cover any of that here.
Ok, but how many copies does the average book sell?
This shocked me. Shocked! I thought it was much, much higher.
According to Publishers’ Weekly, in 2017, “The average book in America sells about 500 copies. Those blockbusters are a minute anomaly: only 10 books sold more than a million copies last year, and fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000.”2
In 2020, the number appeared to be lower, with the average book selling 200 copies per year and 1,000 copies over its lifetime. This is likely due to the increase in the total number of titles published each year.3
In summary, for a traditionally published book:
3,000–5,000 copies over its entire lifetime is common4
10,000 copies is considered solid / successful5
25,000+ copies is very strong
100,000+ copies is rare and usually requires:6
a big platform
strong media
book club adoption
viral word of mouth
My Book Deal for ‘We Are The Luckiest’
I’ve broken it down into earnings, expenses, and then a summary.
The Money Coming In
I received a $20,000 advance for WATL, paid in three equal installments.
January 2019—contract signing—$5,666 after agent commissions
April 2019—acceptance of manuscript—$5,666 after agent commissions
November 2020—final manuscript—$5,666 after agent commissions
Note: this is a very quick schedule for advance payments. More typically, the time between contract signing and manuscript acceptance would be 9-18 months. More on this below.
My agent got 15% off the top, so each check was $5,666. Not money I could survive on, but nice to get. I also had to pay taxes on this, obviously.
My royalty structure is as follows:
Royalties for this publisher are paid twice a year, in May and October. Some publishers pay quarterly, some pay annually.
The Money Going Out
I hired a freelance editor to help me shape the manuscript ($7,500) and a freelance publicist to drum up press at launch ($15,000). I didn’t have to do these things, but I wanted to because I was anxious as hell, it was my first book, and I had the means to do so (or so I told myself).
Having the editor helped me tremendously, both in keeping me on schedule and providing valuable feedback and suggestions. The publicist was good, but I hired her too late in the process, so I’m not sure it was worth it.
I also really wanted to do a book tour, so I paid for and architected it. My publisher subsidized it, which was awesome, but I paid 80% of the cost. They also helped get me into the bookstores in each city.
Book Sales
In September 2022, WATL crossed over 100,000 copies sold, and is now over 150,000. This includes all formats: print, ebook, and audio.
I miraculously earned out my advance in the first month after the book was published, so I got my first royalty check in May 2020.
I want to say: the more time I spend in this world, the more I believe that publishing is just…weird. There are books that hang out on the bestseller list for months and years on end, and it’s easy to see why. Others? Not so much. Sometimes, a book wins every prestigious literary award yet only sells like 5,000 copies, while another book that never hits any lists or wins any awards quietly sells half a million. Publishers sink seven figures into an advance for a book that tanks, but pays a teeny-tiny sum for one that goes gangbusters. A book by someone with a massive social media following won’t move, while another one by an unknown, first-time author does.
Yes, hard work, commitment, quality, skill, and a great publishing team all factor somewhere into the equation, but it’s impossible to tell how or how much for any given book. Publishing success appears to be more random and lucky than anything else—even publishers admit this!
So, while I’m very proud of WATL and beyond grateful it’s reached so many people—and as much as I’d love to think its relative success is all about my skills and talent—it is probably more about timing and various x-factors we’ll never be able to identify or replicate exactly.
The Bottom-Line
I created a spreadsheet to illustrate earnings and expenses from 2019, when I signed my contract, through the end of 2025.
Summarized by year:
$87,000 in earnings is nothing to sneeze at, and if someone were to say, “I’ve earned almost $90K from my book,” we’d all be like, “SWEET.” Just like when we hear, “They got a six-figure book advance!” we’re like, “Damn!” But when you look closer, the story changes quickly.
For me, $87,000 was split across six years after I went $15K in the hole in 2019. I didn’t have to make those initial investments, but I did, and many authors do similar things in hopes it’ll pay off in the end.
Spread out across six years, I’ve made $14,500 per year on this book. I don’t know where you live, but in greater Boston, that wouldn’t even come close to covering rent.
Making $46K in royalties in 2021, only one year after the book came out, is great, as you now know (but made easier by the small advance). But after the agent cut and taxes, I took home about $27K. Real money, but nothing I could live on.
It’s also important to note that the schedule of my advance payments was atypically fast. I got all three installments within 12 months; most schedules are much more spread out. For example, for Push Off from Here, my advance payments were spread across three years: 25% upon signing in 2021, 25% upon acceptance of the manuscript in 2022, 25% upon publication in March 2023, and the final 25% in March 2024. This is a much more common schedule.
To make this more real, let’s say my advance for POFH was a $100,000 advance.
Minus the 15% agent cut and not including taxes, the payments would be as follows:
June 2021: $21,250
May 2022: $21,250
March 2023: $21,250
March 2024: $21,250
Really puts that six-figure advance into perspective, right?
And then, of course, before I received any royalty checks, I’d have to earn out the $100,000 in royalties by selling something like 40,000-60,000 books.
FYI: to date, Push Off from Here has sold 31,103 copies.
I really hope that if you’re a prospective/hopeful author, reading this feels grounding, not demoralizing. I don’t know the breakdown, but I’d say many (most?) authors manage to make a living working other jobs, both part-time and full-time, and have done so from the beginning of time.
Also, you can see how, over time, by publishing several books, even small earnings would accumulate. And, of course, there are all kinds of stories in between making nothing and making a killing! Authors still write, and thousands of books still get published every year, and personally, even given this reality, even if WATL hadn’t sold well at all—I’d still choose to do this. Most days, I’d still rather do this than anything else in the world.
xo
Laura
A version of this piece was originally published in 2023. I’ve updated it to include sales data through 2025 and up-to-date average industry book sales information.
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You are reading Love Story, a weekly newsletter about relationships, recovery, and writing from Laura McKowen. Laura is the founder of The Luckiest Club, an international sobriety support community, and the bestselling author of two books, We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life and Push Off from Here: 9 Essential Truths to Get You Through Sobriety (and Everything Else).
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The only bestseller lists WATL has hit are Publisher’s Weekly, which no one cares about, and a few Amazon categories, which—same. This does not make me a bestselling author. On the cover of WATL, it reads “NATIONAL BESTSELLER” across the top, because at some point in late 2020, my publisher said it had sold enough copies to qualified for this distinction, and I said, Okay! Does this make me a bestselling author? Idk.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/6153-a-bookselling-tail.html
https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-book-sales-what-counts-as-success-might-surprise-you
https://stevelaube.com/what-are-average-book-sales/
https://scribemedia.com/book-sales/
https://www.booksandsuch.com/blog/you-sold-how-many-books/
Wow. That actually makes me feel better- my self published book just hit its 300th sell so now I’m very pleased with that 😁
I really appreciate this! I frequently remind myself that I actually have to write a book before any of this matters to my life. No one is going to turn my unconnected string of anecdotes and observations into a book but me. So first, that, then bring on the millions. 😂