My colleague and I are just negotiating a publishing agreement with a UK publisher for an illustrated children's book. Does anyone have any good advice for us? We are being offered 5% (shared between author and illustrator) on royalties, and are been requested to sign up for a 10 year contract. These seem like pretty poor terms, but perhaps are the norm? Its our first published work in the UK, so we feel that even if the terms don't sound good its worth going ahead? Any advice would be much appreciated!
5% shared between you - so 2.5% each? This sounds remarkably little. A 10 year contract seems like a lock-in. Are you able to renegotiate at any point during that period? Does either side have a withdrawal period after signing up written into the contract, and under what terms?
Be very careful of what rights you are giving them for such a long term. They aren't signing you up for a specified two-book deal, for instance; ten years is a very long time to be tied to a company with whom you may well wish to part ways.
Is it an exclusive contract? Do you have the right to publish other works through another company during that time - for example, if the works are of a different genre or even under a different pen name?
Get any contract checked by a qualified person - the Society of Authors will advise, though one or both of you would have to sign up, and if you're over 35 it's about £95 or so. Worth it, if it saves you from a binding contract that isn't right for you.
Don't get sucked in by the romance of being offered a publishing contract without making absolutely certain that you understand it. Lovely as it is to have someone interested in your work, they are first and foremost in it for themselves. Your penultimate line really worries me!
Harriet, I would never tie myself to a publisher by signing a ten year contract. Also, 5 per cent royalties is a rip off in my opinion.
Most authors receive between 8 &12 per cent royalties on book sales.
Please bear in mind that royalties are not based on the price on the Jacket of a book.
If an author was fortunate to receive 10 per cent royalties on a book priced at five pounds, it would be logical to assume that the author would receive 50 pence a copy.
Not so, because most publishers give wholesale buyers of books 50-65 per cent discount off the jacket price. So the author lucky enough to receive 10 per cent royalties on a book priced at five pounds would receive 25 pence a copy. Depressed yet? It gets worse. A thousand copies would net you £250 before tax, 10,000, £2500, and 100,000, £25,000, so don't pack up your day job.
Before you shoot yourself you might consider self-publishing on Amazon, because Amazon give the author a whopping 70 per cent of royalties, that's £3.50p a copy on a book priced at five pounds. Of course with a guaranteed royalties of 70 per cent you can afford to price your book at less then five pounds, hopefully to sell more copies.
I have to confess that I know little about the process of self-publishing, on Amazon, or elsewhere, but I'm sure there are people on this site who do.
I hope that helps.
Good luck.
I think 5% may be the norm for books that have a higher production cost than others, which includes children's picture books with several full-page colour illustrations. You should check what the 10 year contract means - is it just for this one book, or for any future works?
There is information you might find helpful on this website under the Advice section, for instance on the link below:
https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/162/after-publication/rights-and-legal-advice/publishing-agreements
The other thing to consider if it's worth going ahead is to look at the books the publishing company has already produced - are they good quality? Would you feel proud to have your name on them? And would want to tell future publishers/agents about them? If yes to all of those questions, then I'd say go for it. And congratulations for producing a book that the publisher wants to take forwards.
Best of luck.