In that text, three people earn money: the writer, the artist, and the publisher.
Out of a total income for the book of $15k, the author of the book gets paid $2,600; the artist gets paid $780; and the publisher gets paid the rest of the money, which comes to $11,620--not $1,820. Your authors don't get paid 50% of revenue while you only get 35-40%: the truth is, you take 77.5% of income while your authors get 17.3% and your artists get 5.2%.
Yes, I realise you have to pay for the cost of publishing the books out of your 77.5%; but your authors have to pay for the cost of writing their books out of their 17.3%, and your artists have to pay for the cost of designing and illustrating the books out of their 5.2%.
Now do you see why the risk is not equitable here, you're not splitting the profits with your writers, and you're not getting a smaller percentage of the income than your writers?
I definitely understand your line of thinking, but what you may fail to grasp about our business model, is that everyone - Author, Staff, Artists, etc, are all under a contract. It isn't being passed through the publisher to overhead. Which would account for that 77%, but instead is passed direct as the fee for service to the individual who worked on the project. And that $1,800 or so that the publisher earns, I have boosters to the staff contracts that I have to pay, government fees, and reinvestment into the company.
I'm not going to going to beat a dead horse, even by your own account, 17% is better then what that author would earn under a traditional Big 5 contract, with additional support and access that we as a small press are able to provide.
Because we follow GAAP, it is not possible to define a per unit price, as that price will increase with sales, after you reach the break-even point (this is an effect of economies of scale).
Your contract might be legally sound, and it might be good for you, but it's not good for the writers who sign it.
Travis, while I really appreciate your repeated efforts to clarify things for us here, and I am grateful that you have remained courteous and engaged throughout, I don't like your contract, and I don't like your business model.
I don't think you have bad intentions--not at all--but with all due respect I don't think you know enough about publishing to realise where you're going wrong, I don't think your terms are at all writer-friendly, and you're not being nearly as generous as you seem to think you are.
I still cannot recommend that any writers sign with your publishing house.
And that is your personal opinion and choice. I fully respect and encourage it. I do think that you are wrong in that assessment, but I also acknowledge that TZPP is a young company, and we really haven't shown you our ability to produce wonderful work with strong sales. I would hope that in the near future as we do so, that perhaps the animosity toward our business model will ease and that we might be able to convince you a different model of operation isn't too terrible.
Perhaps my view in the flaw of accounting does come from my lack of experience dealing with it. For now we're going GAAP, it makes more sense across the board.
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