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Change in Royalty Payments Benefits All Infinity Authors |
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Mark Gregory, Infinity Publishing Vice President, recently announced a major policy change regarding the timeliness of royalties paid on orders from Amazon.com and orders that are placed by Ingram through Lightning Source. Recently, Mark explained: “There has always been a lag-time between when Infinity shipped books to Amazon.com and when payment was actually received. This is because books shipped to Amazon are on consignment. This means that when a copy of a book is sold through Amazon, another copy is ordered to maintain their on-shelf inventory. A similar lag-time occurs when Infinity titles are produced by Lightning Source and distributed through Ingram. There is an administrative delay between when the actual sale is reported by Lightning Source and when payment is received by Infinity.
“When we established our guaranteed return book policy for bookstores, we made the determination that royalties would be paid as of the invoice date,” Mark continued. “Now we have a similar policy for books sold to Amazon and for Infinity titles printed by Lightning Source. This new policy will accelerate getting royalty payments on these sales to our authors and their monthly statements will reflect a more current sales history of these wholesale orders. Infinity-published authors will begin to see the positive results of this policy being implemented in their November 2007 Publisher’s Statement.”
Infinity President Tom Gregory remarked, “Commercial book publishers have traditionally paid royalties quarterly or semi-annually to allow for returned books to be accounted for, in order to determine the number of books actually sold. The industry-wide policy is to pay royalties only on sold books—books used by book publishers for promotional purposes are royalty-free. Infinity’s unique book self publishing model enables us to have a more liberal return policy favoring both authors and bookstores. Our returns have been less than projected, with prepaid royalties incurring returns being adjusted from future book sales. We are now able to make more current payments on sales to Amazon.com and through Lightning Source.”
Before Mark Twain became one of America’s most important writers, he and his peers questioned the fairness, accuracy, and payment of royalties. Twain was certain his commercial book publisher was cheating him by underreporting the number of books sold. He was so outraged that he established his own book publishing company and successfully self-published his work. Commercial book publishers who own all the rights to books operate on a rather narrow profit margin based on the number of books distributed, the number of books subject to be returned, and the number of books actually sold and paid for. This royalty structure from the 1800’s provides the basis for most book publishers today.
And long before storyteller Mark Twain, there was Ben Franklin, the legendary printer in Philadelphia. Ben had a straight forward approach to book publishing and distributing work by fellow authors. Franklin would make a deal to publish the author’s book for a share of the sales—after covering the printing costs that included a fair profit. He also earned an additional share of the profit from each book sold—usually at a percentage equal to or slightly less than the author’s share. Naturally, the author could drop by the print shop and ask Ben how their book is selling. At times when an author was short of cash, Ben would kindly advance him the money against future sales—no rights were sold because the book was already in print and distribution. Book publishers purchasing all rights from the author came later; by owning the rights, they could justify their investment in publishing the book. The industry norm of royalty percentages hasn’t changed in favor of the author in many decades. Infinity Publishing embraces many of the wise book publishing principles first established by Ben Franklin |
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