You’ve finally done it. After writing, editing, brainstorming, rewriting, more editing and what can feel like an age, you’ve published your book.
It is an exciting time, waiting to see those sales reports, and the royalties that come with them. However, royalties are not the only way to make an income from your hard work.
In this post, we’ll look at three ways to boost income and increase your opportunities to get the best return on your masterpiece.
Public Lending Right
If a library service has purchased copies of your book, or if you’ve donated a copy, you have the right to be paid per loan.
This is where the Public Lending Right comes in. This scheme allows published authors, illustrators, editors, translators and audiobook narrators to be remunerated for library book loans.
The maximum annual remuneration is currently £6,600 for the UK scheme and up to €1000 for the Irish PLR scheme. Per loan, the current payment is 11p per for UK loans. This may not seem like much, but there is no cost to signing up to either scheme and it is an easy way to see the total loans for your book(s) each year.
Check out the Public Lending Right website to ensure that you meet the criteria and to set up your account.
Amazon Associates Programme
If your book is being sold on Amazon, setting up an Amazon Associates account is a way to receive commission for copies of your book purchased via your own link.
When you have created your account, you can create a variety of links to any product and receive commission. Sharing these unique links then provides your potential customers an easy way to buy your book and allows you to gain fees for referring customers to Amazon.
As part of the reporting, you will be able to see clicks per link, ordered items, and earnings.
For a direct book sale, you can currently earn 6%, with a full list of standard commission income available here.
There are minimum payment thresholds, currently £25 for direct deposit or gift vouchers, and £50 for cheque payment. So, while this can be a nice boost to income, be prepared to wait, as totals less than this will be rolled over until they do meet the minimum for pay out.
Click the link to see if Amazon Associates could work for you.
Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society
Finally, we will look at the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society. This Society requires a one-time payment of £36, which is deducted from the first payment to you as an author. The Society also take 9.5% commission from payments for the running of the society.
However, for this commission, they collect royalties due to UK works from around the world. When payments are due, registered members will receive them twice each year. They states that they have paid out a total of £600 million to members since inception.
Works can include articles, books, scripts, and now image contributions to books, magazines, and journals.
If like me, you haven’t made your mind up yet, you can search your publications before joining. This search will allow you to see if any money has already been collected on your behalf before taking the time to register.
Hopefully, this post will have inspired you to at least research other ways to generate income and ensure that you are gaining the most from your publication. While payments may be small, as the saying of one supermarket goes, ‘Every little helps’!
Do you know of other ways that authors can boost their income? If so, please let us know so we can share with other interested writers. Written by Tim Havenith, author of Calne Place Names.