With my book coming out soon, I thought I'd take this as a chance to answer a very tough question:
What's the Best Way to Support an Indie Author? Where should you buy their books? 🤔💵
Before we start talking about the wild, wild world of 👑royalties👑, I want to make this crystal clear:
The best way to support an indie author* is to BUY OUR BOOKS. Straight up. Paying for our hard work is good enough.
You want to support me? Easy. Buy my book.
*Now, let’s say you don’t care where you get the book from or your goal is to make sure most of your hard-earned money actually goes to the indie author rather than some corporation… then, in that case, read on!
So… what the heck are book royalties anyway?
When you purchase an indie eBook the money you spend is split between the author and the retailer. Depending on the split, more or less of your money will actually end up on the hands of the author you’re trying to support.
This differs from traditional publishing, where the author receives a lump sum as an advance from the publisher (which is then split between author and agent).
The publisher then sells this book on other storefronts, which further splits where the money actually goes.
PS: It is not until the book has actually generated as much revenue as the advance that said author begins to *actually* earn royalties on books sold, which may be as little as cents per book to a percentage of each sale.
To further confuse matters, different retailers offer different royalty rates! 😵
Where should you purchase books from if you want to super-duper support an indie author?
Well, let me give you a tier list—beginning from the TOP!
S TIER: Author's Personal Shop
Buying a book directly from an author's shop is by far the best way support 'em. Outside of a small % that goes to cover for credit card fees (~5% in my case), pretty much all of your money goes to the author.
If the author has a shop—buy it from there!!
It's not just for games, you know! Its royalty rate is one of the most generous with a default 90/10. This is crazy-good compared to most other retailers.
Seriously, more authors should start selling their books on Itch.io!!
Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Google Play Books, and Kobo all offer a 70/30 split. It didn't use to be like this, tho!
If you like to have all of your books on the same platform, buying an indie author’s book through these platforms is honestly A-OK! 👍
Amazon has a default 35/65 rate (ouch) and has the option for a 70/30—but it's not easy. The latter option is not available in all territories and has many prerequisites.
Also, one way to get the 70/30 split is to *exclusively* sell your title on Amazon (ooof).
As if Amazon’s system wasn’t already confusing enough—there’s also *delivery fees*. Yes, you read that right. Amazon charges the author for the delivery of the digital item based on the file size, nickle-and-diming you like it's 2004 and you went over your text message limit.
I don’t want anyone to feel bad for buying books through Amazon. Like I said before, the best way to support us is to buy our books—no matter where you get them.
A sale is better than no sale at all. 🤞
The reason I set out to write this is because the average person has no clue that where you buy a book from actually matters.
You spend your hard-earned money wanting to support an indie author and the bulk of that Hamilton doesn’t even go to them.
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