$: How and What You Get Paid
At Hol, everyone—author, team, and publisher—is paid a percentage of their book's profit, as it sells.
For our part, Hol's share follows a sliding scale based on the number of copies sold. For the rest, we recommend a percentage each team member earns, but it is up to the team to come to a final resolution on how their share is divided. In this way, an author may choose to give up a percentage to entice an editor they really want, a young designer might take less to gain experience in doing the cover, or everyone may take less to hire an additional member.
Here's an example:
On a first printing of 3,000 copies of a 336 page paperback with a cover price of $15.95, we can estimate the net profit at $8,882 (the total revenue minus development, production and distribution costs). For that first printing, the publisher share is 50% and the author and team share is 50%. For each subsequent 3,000 copies sold, the publisher's share is reduced by 5%, to as low as 35%.
A typical breakdown of the profit share and earnings in this case:
Author 25% for earnings of $2,221
Editor 8% for earnings of $711
Publicist 8% for earnings of $711
Designer 6% for earnings of $533
Project Manager 3% for earnings of $266
Publisher 50% for earnings of $4,441
If the book turned out to be a strong seller and went on to sell 12,000 copies, the shares on the last 3,000 copies sold, and the total earnings on all 12,000 copies, would look like this:
Author 28% for final total earnings of $9,944
Editor 11% for final total earnings of $3,571
Publicist 11% for final total earnings of $3,571
Designer 9% for final total earnings of $2,821
Project Manager 6% for final total earnings of $1,697
Publisher 35% for final total earnings of $15,884
Obviously, the picture gets brighter the more copies are sold, but think conservative when considering your own project's potential. We took 40 existing books similar to those we might publish—ranging from scholarly theoretical texts to popular art fiction—and applied covers prices and page lengths for each, and estimated sales of 500 to 5000 per title (the minimum and maximum for Hol's first printings). The average net profit across all 40 titles was $5000, not the $8900 in the above example. The most successful brought in $13,000, and the least, only $700.
For every title accepted for publication by the peer review teams,
Hol pays the upfront costs for printing and distribution. Based on the proposal for your title, we also provide a small amount of development money for you and your team to use as you'd like.
The money might go for a cover illustration, travel expenses for a book event, extra copy editing, a commissioned introduction, or anything else you can think of.
Hol's share of the profits from each individual title published go first to supporting our marketing efforts for your titles and for the house (including our seasonal book catalog, participation in art and book trade fairs, advertising and publicity) as well as to the maintenance and development of our online, collaborative publication system and art book bibliography—the tools that allow teams to publish books and to get them into stores.
A couple extra things to keep in mind: In addition to paperback copies, with new books and whenever possible with older titles, we also want to publish simultaneous hardcover and ebook editions. Though not as significant a source of revenue as the paperback example above, each additional format will bring in incremental income to your team. Also, subsidiary rights. Subsidiary rights to a book includes things like foreign language editions of the work, audio, dramatic (stage, television, and film), etc... We haven't delved into how this will work at Hol, but for authors especially, subsidiary rights to their work can be a valuable source of additional income.
Back to the Work on a Project
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Or, download our working Title Profit & Loss Statements to get detailed financials for a number of sample books.
