Paranormal Romance author, Lynn Viehl, barely broke the poverty line with her bestseller Twilight Fall. She posted her actual royalty statement on a blog Monday. After selling 89,142 copies and being a “best selling author” she only made $25,000.
Now other blogs have talked about this at length, but I want to talk about the 27,479 copies that were returned. Despite how much of a cliche this genre is, I can’t imagine that many people were actually dissatisfied with the book so much they returned it.
I can, however, imagine a bookstore ordering so many more copies than they need to drive down the price. Here’s how the big store like Books a Million, Borders, and probably, Amazon work. They can order how ever large amount they want, and if they want to go to price wars with each other, that’s a lot. Once the smoke clears any unused copies are just sent back the publisher.
Those sales are then deducted from the author’s royalty check. Imagine what someone that held on to all reigns of their book distribution could do with HALF those numbers…
