In January 2024 we published The Regenerative Structural Engineer. If you haven’t yet checked it out, you can find it here and browse the first few pages. At this point you might have thought that that would be the end of this mega (as in overly big rather than amazing) blog series. But I wanted to share a few more bits about book publishing. One item that seems undiscussed is money. So I wanted to share my different and varied experiences as a way of helping other authors (and myself) work out what is the best approach. I have agreed with my co-authors that I can share this information. But which book is which is less important, so I will just refer to them as Book 1, etc.
Book 1+1.5
In January 2015 I joined academia. That Spring, one of my old directors approached me to write a book that they wanted to write but didn’t have the time. It is one of the only books I sole-authored. The book was due to be 80-100 pages long for which I was paid £5,000. The fee was broken up into four parts: a fee for writing and agreeing the outline (this step often doesn’t exist as the proposal covers this, you can read about that here; a fee for the first 30% of the first draft; a fee for the full first draft and a fee for the final draft. In this case, they were split 15%, 30%, 40% and 15% respectively. In addition, I was given ten free copies (don’t underestimate how important these are) which I used to help raise the profile of the book (as well as giving a copy to proud parents and in-laws). As this was additional income, I had to declare it for tax purposes and I required sign-off from my Head of School.
You’ll notice I didn’t get any royalties. That’s because in building design publishing there are online subscription services where companies pay an annual fee for access to a number of publishers’ catalogues. When people then access a book through this service no fee is paid for the book, instead publishers are required to ensure that their catalogue remains attractive so they continue to be paid to keep it in the subscription service (or this is how I understand it). Rather than pay me a small writing fee and royalties (which I would only get on sold books, not ones available through the service) the publisher paid me a larger upfront fee but no royalties.
Two years later the publisher wanted an updated version of the book. In the writing of the book we had created a list of nice to haves, which were sections which we could include, but would delay the publication date. Due to the publishing model it was more important to publish the book (which fulfilled the original brief and was already 50% longer than anticipated) than delay it by a year or two and include these. But the opportunity arose to add this content, as well as update some of the existing content based on both user feedback and my own reflections having used the book in my teaching. I was paid a further £2,500 (over three milestones) and received 10 copies of the updated book. Again, I was paid no royalties.
Book 2
Book 2 is a very different story. Firstly, it is a story of two contracts. Secondly, it involves multiple authors. Thirdly, we were paid royalties.
We found a publisher for Book 2, had agreed the content, and written the book pretty much! But we were stuck on the contract. There were several reasons:
- We would be paid £250 for completing the book (and we would only get this if we delivered it on time) – that was about £40 each!
- Any images that needed paying for would need to be paid for by us (good bye £250)
- All images would be in B&W. If we really needed colour (which if you’ve seen any of my books you will know we did) we could have a selection on colour images in the middle of the book.
- Just 2 copies of the book each (I would have to pick between my parents and in-laws for who to give them to, or maybe I didn’t need my own hard copy!)
- As authors we carried unlimited liability. That is a lot of money. Maybe all the money in the world.
As engineers who were used to reading contracts and haggling over liability we could just about live with 1-4, but 5 was a sticking point. The idea of unlimited liability (for what we weren’t sure) was preposterous.
So, we found a second publisher. One that would limit our liability. We had a first draft of a book already written. We agreed with them that all images would be colour, they would pay any fees for image usage (within reason), they would pay us £2,000 plus royalties, we didn’t agree how many copies we each got (I seem to recall it was at least 5 each) and most importantly our liability would be limited.
The royalties were to be paid at 10% for the first 500 copies, 15% for the next 500 copies and 25% for all copies above this. I don’t think the publisher ever imagined we would break the 500 copies mark (they took me out to celebrate when we did), let alone 1,000 (which we also did!).
Now there is some complexity here. Because the original fee was so small, as were the royalties (when split between the authors) we agreed to give the money to charity and never discussed how to split the money between the authors. When we moved to a new publisher the amount we got paid went up almost tenfold and the royalties more than doubled. We agreed to stick to our original agreement for the upfront payment and the first years royalties, and then agreed to split the royalties equally afterwards. This was a conversation we had after the book was published, making it difficult to discuss alternatives, not that I am unhappy, but ideally it is best to discuss among authors the payment split before you sign the contract.
Book 3
Book 3, like Book 1, was a fixed fee with no royalties. This time two of us authored the book. We were paid £6000 for the book, which we split 50/50. There were again milestones, similar to before. This time we only received 6 copies of the book each.
Book 4 (+0)
Book 4 was a different kettle of fish! This book I self-published. I raised funds via Kickstarter and then sold copies via some online shops. It turns out that as a publisher I am much less generous than other publishers as I didn’t pay myself anything for writing the book. I also only kept a small number of copies! I did, just about, manage to break even – thanks mostly to a number of wonderful people volunteering their time for free, not least the graphic designer who did an incredible job (as noted by A Closer Listen who gave the book a special mention in their packaging of the year award). Really the reflection here is that publishing is tough, and I am extremely grateful to the companies that have paid me.
The other reflection is don’t ever publish three books in one year, but that is another story.
Book 0 is another book I self published, this time as part of my record label five year anniversary boxset. I don’t have much more to add, but you can explore the box set here.
Book 5
And so Book 5 (which you may have, by now, guessed is the book on which I am writing this blog series). For Book 5 we were paid £500 each for writing the book plus 10% between us royalties. Plus, we were given 5 free copies (which was increased to 10 as free copies really are there to help with marketing). For this book we really debated (and people asked us) should we take any money? We thought about this long and hard. I am happy that we did for two reasons. Firstly, for both of us, this wasn’t about the money, what we really earn from this book is different types of capital- social capital in our field as it were- and that is both more valuable to us and something we could not easily give away (and I’m not sure we would want to). Which doesn’t really answer the question, I appreciate. The second part of the answer is that regenerative practice does not mean we should be expected to do things for free, it means we should be paid well for what we do, but that payment can take various forms. As you can see we were paid less well in financial terms than we were for other books (although we were a smaller author base, so really it was very similar). And I believe, in other ways, I will be paid more for the writing of this book than I have for any other.
Concluding thoughts
I hope that by being transparent about how much I have been paid for writing different books it will help others as they navigate this complex space. All the publishers I have worked for sell books AND make them available through subscription services. So it seems reasonable to get paid both for writing the book and royalties (my understanding is 10% is considered the going rate and is also the rate I have agreed for my next book (hopefully out second half of 2024), which I should be working on right now but instead I’m writing this blog post as a way to get the words flowing). Both types of payment also incentivise the authors. I used some of my payment for completing my latest book to buy coffee making equipment (if you’ve seen my latest book, you will have spotted a few photos of me drinking coffee outside) and the royalties incentivise me to market the book (not that I need it, I am really excited about the book and really do want everyone to read it!)
Also, when writing a book with a number of authors, it is good to agree before you sign the contract how you will split any payment. Two things to consider are:
- Is the distribution of work relatively even, or are some people writing more chapters, or more in-depth/challenging to write chapters than others. As lead author (assuming you are lead author) you should have a good view on this.
- Oli mentioned to me that his dad, who’s a musician, used to split the fee equally between the musicians, plus the fixer. The fixer was normally one of the musicians, but they did all the admin, sorted out everything and liaised with the promoter etc. As lead author there can be quite a lot of extra work. You may need to attend meetings, negotiate how many of the corrections/comments need to be included, chase co-authors for chapters etc. Does this extra work warrant an additional slice of the pie?
On reflection, writing this blog post, when you consider the hundreds of hours spent writing these books the financial reward is very small. If I relied on the book payments as income it would be untenable. However I am in a very fortunate position where I am paid well for my work, and as part of my work I am able to write books. Finally, not all academic books will lead to payment. Often the social capital of writing the book is enough. If you are not being paid for writing this post is not to say you should be, but hopefully it is useful for conversations if there is the possibility (which you could ask about). My books have, at least in part, a focus on industry and in that way, they sit in a slightly different market.
