We do royalties a little differently here

Part of the reason Bonedust Press was founded (aside from a desire to see more cool illustrated books in genre fiction for adults) was an old grudge with the way royalties work in most traditional publishing.

For anyone unfamiliar with behind-the-scenes of publishing, authors are usually paid an ‘advance’, a set amount of money that they are paid to write the book, that they have to earn back (hence the name) at the rate of their royalties before they can actually see any profit once the book is being sold.

The term ‘royalty’ is the amount of money an author gets from each sale of their book. This is usually a small percentage of the actual cover price of a book, and authors don’t actually get to see any of that money until their advance has been completely paid off. Unless the book is an instant best-seller this can take years. Lots of books never make back their advance, meaning authors never see a penny beyond the initial payment.

Here at Bonedust Press, we’re determined to do things differently. We think there’s a better way, and one that benefits everyone. So how does it work?

Simple. We don’t pay advances, but we do pay writers and artists for their work. As a one-person operations team, Bonedust Press operates on a tight budget, but we pay as fair a rate as we can. Our current rate of pay here in April 2025:

$100 per illustration for artists + 20% royalties
$0.05 per word for authors + 30% royalties

Now here’s where the experiment really begins. Bonedust Press pays royalties from the very first sale!

How does that work? And how can we afford to make books that way?
We take a higher percentage of cost from each sale until the book is paid off. Here’s a hypothetical example:

An e-book costs $10.
The total cost of creating the book might be $5,000.
Bonedust Press will take $8 from each sale to cover costs, leaving $2 for royalty cuts.
An illustrator earning 20% royalties will get $0.40 for each sale while an author earning 30% will get $0.60

Assuming this is a purely digital book, after 625 sales the cost of the book will be paid off. At that point, royalties will be pulled from the list price, earning $2 at 20% and $3 at 30% for every sale. While we will always strive for every book to do well, there’s no guarantee that every one will make back their cost, and the creative teams that make the books happen deserve to earn something for every sale.

This isn’t new or groundbreaking, but it is something we’d like to see more of in the publishing world. If is able to make even a small impact in our little corner of publishing, then we’re happy.