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Covnam
Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3819
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 Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2020 9:30 pm
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Interesting break down. Can't be easy having to spread yourself to so many different avenues for your income.
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Kougeru
Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5579
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Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2020 9:34 pm
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This is super interesting but I feel bad for no royalties for LN artists.
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xxmsxx
Joined: 06 Sep 2017
Posts: 599
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Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2020 10:48 pm
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| Quote: | | For physical books, creators get paid 10% the price of the books at the start of each print run, while with e-books artists get paid a 15% cut of sales each month. |
Always knew the percentage would be low, but I thought it would be at least 25%.... *sigh*
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nargun
Joined: 29 Mar 2006
Posts: 930
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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2020 4:21 am
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| xxmsxx wrote: |
| Quote: | | For physical books, creators get paid 10% the price of the books at the start of each print run, while with e-books artists get paid a 15% cut of sales each month. |
Always knew the percentage would be low, but I thought it would be at least 25%.... *sigh* |
Remember, tankoubon are cheap. This one retails at 528￥, or ...480 before tax: so... probably something like a hundred yen to the retailer, fifty yen royalty, fifty yen to cover editorial costs, so not quite three hundred yen to print, bind and distribute a two-hundred page book? I'm a printer, that's an insane number. Those are nothing but guesses, but it shows the scope of the problem.
They could raise the cover price, but that'd mean that they wouldn't sell as quickly [japanese wages are not large!], so you'd need to up the retailer margin, and the editorial costs would be spread over fewer volumes and the print runs would drop upping the per-copy costs and eurgh. It's like a rocket, an extra gram of weight to orbit adds massively to the earlier stages.
[currently it's 105￥ to your american dollar]
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Ushio
Joined: 31 Jul 2005
Posts: 635
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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:31 pm
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| Kougeru wrote: | | This is super interesting but I feel bad for no royalties for LN artists. |
How many illustrations does an average LN have? I have a few English translated LN's and there are maybe 4 pages of illustration in the 180-190 page books even if they did get royalties LN's are cheap $5-6 for the average 200-300 page ones so after printing, publishing, advertising and retailers cut how much should an artist get for a handful of pages when the writer is earning maybe 50-100 yen a copy at best.
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minakichan
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Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2020 5:00 pm
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| xxmsxx wrote: |
| Quote: | | For physical books, creators get paid 10% the price of the books at the start of each print run, while with e-books artists get paid a 15% cut of sales each month. |
Always knew the percentage would be low, but I thought it would be at least 25%.... *sigh* |
This is in line with what Western authors make too. Since the bookseller buys the book at a wholesale rate that might be something like half the entire price of the book, there's not much left to carve out already, and then the cost of printing the book itself could be something like 25% before you get to all the other costs like shipping, editing, and paying other staff and logistics folks. Unfortunately I think it's impossible for any physical book industry to be paying just the creator 25% unless there's a way for them to self-pring and self-publish like doujinshi. But e-books are a good example of how having less intensive production (editing, printing, shipping physical books) can decrease the number of cuts and put more money in the creator's pocket.
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