How To Publish Your Nonfiction Book and Make Money

When I asked for feedback in July, Stephen N. asked — 

I understand that the majority of authors can't expect to earn much from advances and royalties. 
But what does "much" mean, exactly?  Is there a way to realistically determine what to expect? 

Y’all. Stephen asks the tough and great questions! 

Before I answer, I want to offer the same caveat I always do. My advice is for authors who want to write prescriptive, how-to nonfiction because that’s what I work on. 

(If you want to know about other types of books, sign up for this.)

The idea that most authors don't earn much from advances and royalties is actually a great example of how folks misunderstand publishing — including how the money works.

First: An advance is what’s paid to an author in advance of earnings. 

It’s sort of like one of those “get paid early” offers that banks do where you can use the money from your paycheck a few days early. Only in this case the author gets their money slowly, in multiple payments, usually over a year or two. 

A publishing advance is not a windfall because a book deal is not the lottery. Instead, the advance is meant to help an author pay for help writing the book (by hiring someone like me) or cover the cost of paying someone to help promote and sell the book in the future. 

In that way, an advance is more like a cash injection of capital into your business for a future product (your book) rather than a personal payday.

Second: Royalties only happen after you do what’s called “earning out” — meaning that you have sold enough books to cover what the publisher fronted you in the advance and all their costs too.

The easiest way to explain this is math. (Sorry not sorry.)

Let’s pretend that you were offered a $150,000 advance from BirdHouse* to publish your book.

BirdHouse paid you the advance and it cost them another $150,000 to produce your book.

On publication day, BirdHouse has spent $300,000 and not sold a single copy (except for pre-orders, which all count on day 1. Don’t ask me why; I’m not a book-sales-reporting expert).

Your book costs $30 (to make aforementioned math easy).

In order for you, the author, to earn royalties — you need to generate more than  $300,000 worth of sales.

Or — sell 10,001 books — which adds up to $300,030.

From there you would get a percentage of every book sold, which varies based on a bunch of stuff we won’t get into. 

The quick (and not at all accurate) math of royalties after earning out is roughly $2 to $4 per $30 book sold. And yes, the publisher retains the rest. Because they took a chance and gave you capital in advance to write the damn book.

And that’s if and when you get a book deal. And if and when you earn out.

You may already know the hard truth that most authors don’t do either of those things. 

The economics of publishing are that the profit generated by big bestsellers (like Atomic Habits) pay for the financial losses of everything else. Which sucks for authors in a lot of ways, but also guarantees that editors, publishers, agents, and even I will take a chance on projects sometimes. 

(In my opinion — all in all, this wacky economic setup is a good thing.)

So — how should you prepare?

Don’t count on book sales as a main source of revenue in your business. 
Do think of your book as an affordable, accessible offer for your clients and customers.

Don’t believe that publishers will be interested in your book based on your idea alone.
Do understand that followers/audience/author-platform/your ability to sell books is as essential to a book deal as a great, innovative, salable idea.

Don’t make assumptions on how much or how little you’ll earn from your book.
Do research, ask smart questions and consider your goals when it comes to making decisions around how and when you’ll publish.

*bonus points if you can identify the #1 biggest publishing conglomerate in America whose name is literally [Bird] [Word] House.