Indie Publishing Secret #24 When Do I Get Paid?

Indie Publishing Secret #24- Payment


Last week we talked about how much we earn as authors, now it's time to discuss when we get paid.

Publishers pay quarterly. That means you will get a check every three months when your book sells.

If you indie-publish you will be at the mercy of the places you sell your books. For example, Createspace pays monthly after the books sells. That means that books you sell in February will show up in your bank account at the end of April and only if your total is more than $20.00.

By the way, it is important that you let them pay you electronically. Checks require higher totals sold and take a lot more time.

You will get paid for your ebook with Amazon 60 days following the end of the calendar month when the applicable sale occured. That means that if you sold a book in January, you would get paid in April for that book if your total is more than $10.00.

Barnes and Noble pays the same way Amazon does.

Smashwords pays quarterly and you receive the check 40 days after that period ends. If you sell books in Jan/Feb/and March, you will be paid at the end of April and March may not be included. Confusing, huh! Your total must be more than $10.00.

You may put your book in consignment stores. You will be paid if they sell.

My distributor pays monthly, but there is a lag time of 3 months from when the book was invoiced. That means that at the end of each month a new books go out, they send me an invoice. Three months later I get paid on that invoice. 

It's tricky.

That is why you need to have a back-up of money to tide you over. If you print 1000 and all thousand go out that first month, you still have to wait almost 4 months to get paid.

You will need more money to print more books and you can't rely on that income. Be prepared to pay for several printings before you get paid.

You could, of course, put it all out there and print more than 1000 at a time. You will save per book, but they may take time to move or never move. Not to discourage you, but first time authors usually don't move 2,000 books. With that said, my book has already moved 2500 in less than 4 months. It is possible.

You have to determine the amount of risk you are comfortable with. Also, with debut indie authors, the curve tends to go up slowly at first then explodes around the year to two year mark. That's a long time to wait to be paid.