I received a nice surprise from Switzerland today! I received royalties for my Harlequin/Love Inspired e-book novel, First Mates.

~Cecelia Dowdy~

Top earning authors of 2011 from Forbes Magazine

Here’s the complete list with all of the names. I’ve also copied and pasted below:

James Patterson ($94 million)

Stephen King ($39 million)

Janet Evanovich ($33 million)

John Grisham ($26 million)

Jeff Kinney ($25 million)

Bill O’Reilly ($24 million)

Nora Roberts ($23 million)

Danielle Steel ($23 million)

Suzanne Collins ($20 million)

Dean Koontz ($19 million)

J. K. Rowling ($17 million)

George R. R. Martin ($15 million)

Stephenie Meyer ($14 million)

Ken Follett ($14 million)

Rick Riordan ($13 million)

Just curious, does the list surprise you? Have you ever met any of the authors on this list?

The only one I’ve ever met is Nora Roberts. She’s a member of my local RWA chapter and she’ll sometimes attend the yearly retreat.

I’ll be honest – I’d like to be on this list!

~Cecelia Dowdy~

I received my first royalties for my novel, First Mates, re-released on Kindle today. If you haven’t read First Mates, you might want to give it a try! I’ve been receiving some nice reader mail lately about this book!

~Cecelia Dowdy~

Received my royalties yesterday for Chesapeake Weddings. It’s always nice to get a little bit of cash in my pocket.

Speaking of money, I heard that Border’s was filing Chapter 11 yesterday! What do you think about that? Yikes!! From what I understand, they’re not closing all of the stores, just some of them. Here’s a list of the stores that will be closing. Also, they are liquidating their stock and a lot of stuff will be on sale this weekend since it’s President’s Day Weekend? I recall how I first started going to Borders several years ago. A friend of mine recommended that I go there since he saw how much I love books and Borders had a coffee bar and you could sit and scan books while drinking your coffee, plus, the place was huge! The book/publishing industry grows, shrinks, and changes as time goes on, I guess.

~Cecelia Dowdy~

Received my royalty statement and check from Barbour today! 🙂

~Cecelia Dowdy~

Lynn Viehl, author of Twilight Fall, a New York Times mass market bestseller, was kind enough to share her first two royalty statements on her blog. I posted about the first royalty statement here.

You can find the information about her second statement here.

There are a few things that I wanted to highlight about her second blog post:

#1. The net sales units are 61,663 copies
#2. According to the statement, the author made a net amount of $30,155.69. HOWEVER, after you subtract her agent’s commission and taxes, the amount she actually kept for herself was $24,517.36!
#3. If she were forced to live solely upon the $24,517.36, for her family of four for one year, she would only be slightly above the US poverty level! 🙁
#4. The author mentioned that she wondered how her numbers compared to other New York Times mass market bestsellers. It’s hard to say because other authors don’t offer up this information, publishers don’t offer up this information, or, if they do, it’s always done anonymously!
#5. She still hasn’t earned out her $50,000 advance yet!

I’d like to take a moment to tell what I heard about advances and earning out recently. I was listening to the CDs from the last American Christian Fiction Writers Conference. One of the workshops was on advances. I heard an industry professional state that more than 80% of the advances they pay DON’T earn out! That’s shocking! I’m thinking that Lynn’s numbers might be comparable to other authors.

I’d like to publicly thank Lynn for offering this information to her blog readers. She’s answered questions that I’ve often wondered about.

~Cecelia Dowdy~

I received my royalty statement and check from Barbour today! I’ve been so busy that I forgot that it was about due! Glad to receive it! I can always use some cash!

~Cecelia Dowdy~

Angie asked the following question when she commented on my last blog entry:
What are reserves against returns?

I’ll try and answer the best that I can! Reserves against returns is when your publisher holds back (meaning they don’t pay you) a portion of your royalties until they’ve received a greater majority of the returns on your book. When a publisher receives returns, they deduct your royalty amount for each return against your amount earned.

For example, if you earned $500.00 in royalties, your publisher may decide to hold back $100.00 of this amount in reserve. As time goes on, maybe a year or so later, you might get $25.00 worth of returns – this $25.00 represents the amount in royalties you would have received if those books had sold. Once most of the returns are in, the publisher would then pay you the $100.00 minus the $25.00 in returns, netting $75.00 royalty check to you, the author.

I noticed from the link that I posted that the author did not receive a royalty check on her April 2009 statement. This happens when you receive your first one or two statements, you might not get a check, or you might get a small check. I sense that this author will receive a royalty check on her next statement, or the one after that.

~Cecelia Dowdy~

If interested, see this link. I’d meant to place this on my blog awhile back, but I forgot to do it! I know a lot of authors dream about making the NY Times Bestseller’s list (myself included). Here are the highlights of the post:

The author’s book, Twilight Fall, debuted at #19 on the New York Times mass-market list back in July 2008.
She received the first royalty statement for this NYT novel in April 2009 (Yes, publishing can be quite slow at times.)
First print run was 88,500 copies.
Total sales units, as of this royalty statement, are 64,925
Royalties = $40,484.00 (this amount does not include the reserves against returns)
The author received an advance of $50,000
She’ll be receiving the next royalty statement October or November 2009.

So take a look at the link to glean more information if interested. I’m glad the author shared her royalty statement with the rest of us!

~Cecelia Dowdy~