Philip Pullman: writers deserve bigger royalties

[Jo Zebedee]

But don't the bookstore chains buy from the publishers at a defined cost? In that case you already know what the net royalty will be before they decide what to retail it at. But you have worked in a bookstore so you may be able to shed some light on this.

That's what I meant by terms being key - what percentage the bookseller wants. And, under a net profits contract, the author's royalties go down or up based on that because the publisher's profit goes down.

 

[pambaddeley]

A few years after the NBA was scrapped, I attended a talk by editors from large mainstream publishers who were bemoaning the fact that the supermarkets now had them over a barrel demanding massive discounts. Basically, as Jo says, if the publisher receives a smaller return, so does the writer.