There is an opinion going around that I wish to address. Here it is: Paperbacks provide more value to their author.

I have encountered this several times. A few fans believed that paperbacks are more valuable to me in terms of royalties and exposure.

This simply isn’t true.

I make approximately $1.00 per paperback sale on both of my paperback novels. Their equivalent e-books bag me $3.45 per book for The Eye of God and $4.14 per book for Storm Without End. 

So, why the royalty differences between The Eye of God and Storm Without End? The Eye of God, as my very first published novel, is far more flawed than my second book. Like others, I was learning. I captured a lot of what I wanted to, but I had a lot of fledgling errors. Some I’ve fixed. Some will never get fixed.

The book is also only 80,000 words. So, I priced it at $4.99.

Storm Without End rings in at 100,000 words, and is a far stronger novel, in my opinion. It’s much closer to where I want to be in my storytelling skills. So, I think the price difference matches the novels very well.

Both of these books get me 70% royalties on the e-book versions.

The paperback novels essentially get me production costs minus amazon’s cut, then my cut thereafter. I don’t know the exact figures, because it was something I was giving to my fans rather than something I ever expect to make real money from. That said, traditionally published novelists often get a big, bad $0.25 per printed copy sold. (That used to be the standard. I’m not sure if that still applies.)

Honestly, I included the paperbacks because I felt some people still just love the feeling of a paperback book, so I wanted to make sure I could give that to them.

That’s all.