Help me help my friend

December 15, 2011 6:36 PM

How do I make sure my author friend gets the biggest bang for my buck?

My friend is recently published (yay!!!) and I want to buy her book. It is available on her publisher's website, and also on Amazon. The thing is, it's nearly twice as much if I buy it direct from the publisher. So now the question:

does buying her book off Amazon for half the price mean she will get half the bucks she would get if I buy the pricier one? Did Amazon 'buy' her books already and she got her usual cut from the publisher? Does it make much of a difference either way?

I'll buy the more expensive one if it means a significant boost in her earnings, but the smart consumer in me needs to know if it actually matters how much I pay.

Thanks!

posted by CookieNose to Work & Money (13 answers total)

Previously.
posted by grouse at 6:39 PM on December 15, 2011

Would it maybe make sense to buy the cheaper one and just directly give your friend the difference in price between that and the one off the publisher's site or the list price? I would expect that your friend would get way more money that way.
posted by XMLicious at 6:52 PM on December 15, 2011

Best answer: Buy from Amazon, because Amazon's sales ranking is important. Also, leave a glowing review. Don't just give her a $20--it's tacky and if everyone did, she'd have a tax nightmare.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:58 PM on December 15, 2011

Pirate it and give her the list price and she'll get the most money.

See also record industry.
posted by Brian Puccio at 6:58 PM on December 15, 2011

A standard publisher/author contract generally contains a provision for payment in a couple of ways. There may or may not be an advance, which is, obviously, paid to the author before publication. Then there are royalties on books sold. A publisher could include a clause differentiating between books sold via Amazon (or Barnes and Noble or whatever) and books sold via the publisher's own website. I've never heard of it being done that way.

The reason Amazon is less is because they get a discount for volume purchasing and can sell it cheap (i.e. the Wal-Mart model). The publisher just lists the standard cover price on their website, because they can't be undercutting traditional sales outlets like regular old bookstores. She should get the same amount either way. Which, on a single book, is likely to be something less than a penny.
posted by ronofthedead at 7:01 PM on December 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Buy the cheaper one, and also buy the author a bottle of wine.
posted by pompomtom at 7:06 PM on December 15, 2011

Please don't pirate it. That hurts an author's sales, and sales directly influence whether the author gets another book deal, and how much money he or she will get as an advance, which is generally the way most writers make money, since a lot of people don't sell enough to get royalties.

Buy it wherever you want, leave a glowing, glowing review if it's on Amazon or BN.com, and tell your friends how much it rules.
posted by Countess Sandwich at 7:14 PM on December 15, 2011

The difference your friend is going to see is probably only a buck or two (if that). Are you in the same city? Take her out to lunch at a nice restaurant to celebrate the publication of her book.
posted by plastic_animals at 7:25 PM on December 15, 2011

Best answer: Which, on a single book, is likely to be something less than a penny.

I wrote a book this year and the amount I get per book is in the three-digit pennies level [i.e. a few bucks] per book. This is, of course, a somewhat overpriced academic publisher, but yeah in any case as long as you buy it NEW I get the same amount of money per book sold. And yes, the best way to help your friend is to favorably review it in a bunch of different places so that other people check it out and say "Oh hey I might like that."

Please don't start a pirating argument in this thread.
posted by jessamyn at 7:26 PM on December 15, 2011

Also, be aware that the money she earns from your purchase will not make it to a royalty check for about 18 months.
posted by COD at 7:26 PM on December 15, 2011

I second the people who are saying that if you want the money to actually reach the author, you should just give it to the author. Gifts of cash are tacky, so take your friend out for lunch, or drinks, or something.
posted by madcaptenor at 7:53 PM on December 15, 2011

My friend published a book this year. She bought her copies from Amazon because they were only a tiny bit more expensive than buying from her publisher and she figured it would help sales rankings.

She was also very pleased when people favorably reviewed her book online.
posted by momus_window at 8:50 PM on December 15, 2011

Buy it on Amazon leave a glowing review, AND take her out to lunch! (There's a clause in most publisher contracts that halves the amount of royalty authors get on sales made to distributors who pay less than 52-60% of cover for the title -- and Amazon is definitely one of those, BUT the reviews really do help drive sales overall, so...)

Now that Amazon's got that "Amazon verified purchase" thingamajig, I suspect reviews made by people who've actually bought the book from Amazon are getting weighted differently.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 10:41 AM on December 16, 2011