How Much Do Authors Make Per Book Sold. That said, the average author spends $2000 to $5000 to publish their books, and few authors earn any money. Publishing doesn’t cost me anything, because i format, edit and design myself… but your first book will probably cost money, because it involves setting up everything).
And after 10,000 copies have sold, you are earning $3.75 per book. So, for example, let’s say a publisher sells 5,000 copies of your book at a $20 retail price for each book sold (i’m using round numbers here for simplicity). Independents pay an average of $1,000 to $5,000 for advances compared to the $50,000 to $100,000 advances that major publishes had typically paid for debut literary fiction.
With all due respect, this question is the completely wrong question to ask because ‘the average self publishing author’ does not really exist there are different groups of authors that achieve different levels of success.
The publisher receives $3.50 per copy sold, and that royalty is 25% of that, or $0.77 per sale, with 600,000 sales, for a total of $462,000. Answered 10 years ago · author has 137 answers and 1.3m answer views. It depends completely on the book. Let us also say that you are being paid royalties based on the retail price of your $20 hardcover book.