Royalty Statements

Some royalty statements arrived this week and PA John has been practising making sense of them and learning how to enter the information onto a simple spreadsheet (the only way to keep track of things).

Some publishers still send out statements requiring decoding skills that the guys at Bletchley Park would have been proud of, but many are getting at least a little more user-friendly. I don't pretend to be able to make sense of all the codes and sub-sections, but I like to keep track of the bottom-line of what has been earned each period, and what the new running total is. (NB: do you like my shark stapler?):

For most books, this means the Unearned Balance, at least for a while - that is: what I have yet to earn before I have covered my advance and get any more money (sigh). But for books that have either done really well, or have simply been chugging away for a very long time, I actually get a payment (hurrah!).

My royalty payments are generally more the kind that will buy a nice new pair of shoes, rather than a nice new yacht but, hey-ho, it all feels like free money by that stage anyway...

By the way, if you are confused about why Thursday's post Digitally Created Backgrounds appeared, then immediately disappeared, it's because Blogger went down this week and that post got wiped off. It's back again now.

Royalties and Advances

Today I got my royalty statements through from Gullane - always exciting, as they publish the majority of my titles, and also most of the ones that have sold beyond the advance.

For those who don't know how it works: authors and illustrators get paid an 'advance' before the book is published, so that we don't starve to death, waiting all the years it takes for the books to get out there and gradually earn money, a few pence at a time (we get a tiny percentage of what you pay for each book).

Illustrators receive this advance in stages, usually 4 bits: a little on signing the contract, a big chunk on finishing the roughs, an even bigger chunk on delivery of artwork, and then a small amount on publication day.

From then on, you get royalty statements every 6 months, to tell you how sales are going and how much of your advance the publisher has earned back. Unfortunately lots of books never earn enough to quite match the advance, but that's OK - you don't have to pay anything back (phew)!

Once you have sold enough books for your pennies to mount up to the value of your advance, you start to earn royalties: which means that every 6 months, when the royalty statements arrive, the publishers pays you whatever your percentage has amounted to.


Which might sound straight forward, but the big snag is that royalty statements are generally written in publisher's code and often virtually unintelligible (grrrrr...). So, well done and a huge thank you to Gullane, for re-designing their statements recently, so they are totally clear and author friendly!!

Free Money!!!!

Just a reminder, in case you've forgotten, or there is anyone out there who doesn't know about the DACS Payback scheme:

If you are a visual artist, whose work has been published in a UK book or magazine at any time, or has been broadcast on UK television in the last 18 months, you could be eligible for some FREE MONEY! Truly - no catch.


£3 million of royalties is shared out every year, you just have to fill in an application form before 30 September 2009 to make your claim. It's not just recent publications either - you can claim for work published many years ago: I still get money for editorial work I did in the 1980s.

You can register on-line on the DACS website, or email them. It totally free and you don't need to be a member. But get going now - there are just 10 days left!