Experiences with anthologies that offer x% royalties split among authors

Rechan

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As I look at sites that announce anthology open calls, I see a lot that have a payment setup that's 50% of profits are split equally among all the authors.

What are the experiences of those who've went this route, and what are the opinions?

I had two stories in one book that was under this model and I never saw a penny for it.
 
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veinglory

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It is a perfectly rational model to reimburse your for you proportion of the content in the book. Of course how much you will earn will still depend on how well the book does and will be proportionally smaller than if it was a single author title, and so take longer to make minimum payout etc. I lean towards one off payments for short stories for this reason. But if it is a publisher I have other work with, I do not hesitate as I am already dealing with all the royalties paperwork from the anyway.
 

Hoplite

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As I look at sites that announce anthology open calls, I see a lot that have a payment setup that's 50% of profits are split equally among all the authors.

I had a short story published in one such anthology. I can't remember what the royalty rate was, but it was different for print and ebooks, and all contributors were paid a small (i.e. token) advance against the royalties.

What are the experiences of those who've went this route, and what are the opinions?
The anthology has been for sale since September 2013, and the last royalty statement I received made it clear I shouldn't be expecting anything more than the advance I already got.

I've decided to focus on per/word payment model publishers rather than royalty models, but that's just my opinion. There was nothing wrong with the publisher, or the anthology.

I had two stories in one book that was under this model and I never saw a penny for it.
You didn't receive any advance?
 

Rechan

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You didn't receive any advance?
No; payment was purely royalties. And so the anthology never sold and thus no payment was ever given.

I see a lot of anthology open calls that offer zero advance, only royalties.
 

Polenth

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I could technically get royalties from one of my story sales, but it hasn't happened yet. I either look for places with one-off payments or that pay a sum in advance (which in most cases is best to treat like a one-off payment).

A place that only offers royalties is unlikely to be one able to sell enough copies to pay those royalties. It's another way of saying, "We've had no successes so we've got no money to pay you an advance... but if we somehow manage to pull a rabbit from a hat, you'll get paid." You can do better.