Congratulations!

The hard work has been completed: your manuscript has been finished, edited and bound. The book which you dreamt of for so long has finally materialised and now sits pride of place on your bookshelf.

Perhaps, that is mission accomplished. Perhaps, the dream stops with your name printed on the spine of a book; your name listed on a bookshop’s website; your title of ‘Published Author’.

But that is not the end of the line – quite far from it!

You’ve put something out into the world and should expect to see some returns on your achievement. In the world of publishing, those rewards are called ROYALTIES.

Well, what are royalties?

It has nothing to do with kings and queens; instead, it relates to the financial returns of artists across all creative industries. The Collins dictionary defines “royalty” as…

Payments made to authors when their work is sold. They usually receive a fixed percentage of the profits from these sales.

That “fixed percentage” is detailed for all our authors under Section 16 of your Publishing Contract and for our future authors, will be discussed with you in the Submissions stage by a member of our team.

So, how much will you earn?

At the end of the day, cash is king. If you sell more books, across more retailers, then you’ll receive more royalties. It really is that simple – except it’s not.

Pegasus Publishers work in collaboration with our authors in the production and promotion of their books, meaning that you share any royalties with us. Now at first glance, that deal may sound a little unfair, but remember that we can distribute your books globally through industry-recognised wholesalers and the outreach of a company is further than the outreach of publishing alone.

We also sell our authors’ books directly from our warehouse through listings on our website. This allows us to keep 100% of the money paid by the customer and share that with our authors fairly and completely.

Books are sold all over the world by large multi-national retailers – Amazon are the most affluent of these. Now Amazon, being one of the world’s largest and most profitable companies, can offer an unbelievable outreach to authors – getting eyes on your book from a global audience.

Amazon understand the importance of their outreach and understand that authors want to be listed on their website. For that, they demand a large cut of the profits. When we receive the rest of those profits, we need to split that between us and you – the author.

And, what can I expect to receive?

In financial terms, your royalty will be taken from what is called the ‘net sale’.

This means that once retailers take their share of the profits, the remaining figures are divided up as according to your contract.

One thing that we celebrate at Pegasus Publishers is the fact that we provide our authors with a greater royalty share than most major publishing houses. With the aim to encourage and support first-time authors, our hybrid contracts share the upfront cost as well as the backend rewards.

It’s this shared ideal that makes us proud that so many first-time authors come to us and we get to help share their stories with the world.

Finally, when will I paid?

Your books have been sold, the royalties calculated, and your bank account is awaiting our transaction. When will the send button be pressed?

Well royalties are collated and calculated bi-annually: on January 1st and July 1st. You may have heard the term ‘royalty window’, which is the timeframe reflected in your royalty statement.

Received a statement in January? The window will be from July 1st to December 31st. A statement in July will reflect sales from January 1st to June 30th.

Now, with the complexities of compiling sales figures, these statements have a few caveats. The most important of these are that external retailers (like Amazon, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble) provide their statements with a delay – usually 3 months later.

So, it is better to describe the royalty window as a reflection of the sales statements we have received from our warehouse and from our external partners in the designated timeframe.

The final consideration to know is that despite January or July 1st being the start of a new royalty window, it can take up to twelve weeks for our team to confirm all the statements and send them to their respective authors.

Hopefully, we’ve provided you with a comprehensive explanation of our royalty process and now you know what to expect once you receive your next statement.

It is an exciting wait to see how much your hard work has earned for you, but we do kindly ask that you try not to get too excited as our team work as fast as possible to compile and send out royalty statements.

If you are still waiting for yours to come through, they will be sent in due course.