Publishing Career Firsts: A Royalty Payment for a Novel

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I signed with my agent in 2007, landed a publishing contract in 2008, and published my first novel, CHILD OF FIRE, in September 2009. That’s almost exactly seven years ago.

Since then, I published two more books with Del Rey, wrote and published a game tie-in novel for Evil Hat, and self-published six more novels and collections.

Yesterday, I earned my first royalty from a publisher for one of my novels.

My agent’s foreign rights division cleverly sold my self-published trilogy, The Great Way, to German publisher Blanvalet. Along with the on-signing payment for that deal (delayed due to international tax paperwork, and my struggles with same) they sent the royalty payment for The Way into Chaos — or, I should say, “Die Pforte Der Shatten“, which if translated would probably be a far more commercial title than I chose.

Not that this was my first foreign rights sale. Child of Fire and the other Twenty Palaces books have been published in Russian, German, French, Polish, and some others I’m forgetting. However I don’t recall getting any payment beyond the advance.

But wait! you ask. If I have six self-published novels, haven’t I been getting royalty payments from Amazon, et al?

Nope. No matter what terminology they prefer, Amazon takes a commission from sales, they don’t pay royalties.

Anyway, seven years to this milestone! The amount is almost but not quite enough to cover a week’s groceries, but I’ll take it.

Publishing is weird.