Hey, it looks like I will finally earn some money from my first non-fiction book, at some time in the next six months!
I wrote this book after securing a commission from J. A. Allen (part of Hale Books in the UK), and it was published six years ago, January 2008.
I recounted my experiences with traditional publishing, including figures, here , written in January of this year (2014).
Well I am happy to announce that my latest royalty statement has now arrived, and I have only £19.50 left to pay off my advance before I start earning – yay!
In the last 6 months I’ve managed to sell 40 copies (many as a direct result of my own direct sales tactics), for a resulting £70 paid off my advance.
Yes, these are tiny figures, and no, I’m not going to make a living from these books, but the satisfaction of actually ‘earning out’ (paying back my advance) is going to be HUGE, as so very few published books ever achieve this.
My next concern is going to be – will my publisher reprint? As it has taken so long to sell (original print run was 2500 copies; now 200 left, and at this rate it will take another 2-3 years to sell out completely) I don’t know. I’ll be very disappointed if not, as it’s a great learning tool which will always have a market, because new people take up dressage training all the time, but it’s out of my hands.
Just keeping my fingers crossed, and looking forward to that first REAL royalty cheque.
I will let y’all know when it arrives 😀
deborahjay 
That’s awesome!–I’m glad you’re going to see the $$ soon!
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Thanks Connie – I’m chuffed, even though the financial return is gong to be tiny, I have the satisfaction that my book earned out 🙂
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I have your book and love it. Can you do an ebook?
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Thanks Ruth, I’m always pleased to hear how useful people find it.
Just at the moment, a book such as this, with multiple photographs and diagrams, is not easy to reproduce as an ebook. For one thing, the basic reader such as the standard kindle, doesn’t support colour pics, or graphics. As more advanced readers such as Kindle Fire become more common, it will get easier, although formatting and layout will be far more complicated than for straightforward text.
So the answer is yes, at some point in the future, but sadly not yet.
If I may ask a favour, would you consider leaving a review of BBT on Amazon? Every little helps… 🙂
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Debby, I just did what I should have done months ago: I ordered this book!
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Oh wow, thanks Karen!
Hope you find it as useful as most people seem to 🙂
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It will certainly be useful. The book will be delivered in about four weeks. Really looking forward to reading it. 🙂
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Congrats Deb! On the brighter side, you can self pub it along with your others when your term runs out and probably sell more. 🙂
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Thanks Deb. Maybe by the time I can get the rights back, the technology will have caught up to do it as an ebook with more ease than it would take right now. Wouldn’t say no to a reprint though, it’s a lovely hard back book.
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