Royalty Statements: July 2025

This week's issue of Real Talk for Writers came as a request from a few debut authors that I know. There is so rarely transparency when it comes to sales numbers (author Jason June being one of the rare exceptions -- the royalty posts on his newsletter inspired some of my formatting this week), which leaves many authors (especially debuts!) unsure how to interpret their own numbers.  

Of course, interpreting your sales data is challenging for more reasons than a lack of transparency. There are so many factors that play a role in whether a book is consider "a success" by the publisher. There's age category and genre. How much money the publisher paid out in the advance. How much they spent on marketing (a number they'll basically never tell you). Plus all the intangible stuff, like the publisher's personal opinions and whims and how similar titles did during that same time period. 

Add on top of ALL of that... It's all too easy to get your sense of self worth (or your book's worth) tangled up in these numbers even though sales numbers are not at all a reflection on your value or the quality of the story you wrote. 

Since this is the first time I'm tackling royalty statements here, I've included a retrospective of the first royalty period for each book before diving into the breakdown of my July 2025 royalty statements.

The Early Days of a Book's Release

Royalty statements -- and how much data you have access to in-between those twice-a-year updates -- varies massively between publishers.

All my books (so far) are published with Penguin Random House, which has a fairly robust author portal that provides weekly sales updates, so your mileage may vary if you're with a different house. PRH also has some of the simpler royalty statements that I've seen, which makes it a bit easier to see wtf is going on (some are extremely convoluted, so if you don't understand yours, ask you agent!).

It's also important to keep in mind that there's often discrepancy between the numbers in a publisher's portal vs what shows up on your royalty statement. I've found that, in my case, the portal numbers only account for about 60% of total sales. Again, though, your experience may vary.

To start, let's look at the first 12 weeks of sales for each of my three YA titles, which came out in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Obviously, that is now several years ago, and the YA landscape has changed a lot since then (also, the pandemic impacted two of those releases) so with all the numbers I share in this post, please do not use this as a way to feel bad about your own numbers if they're lower.

Week 1 Sales: 

The first week of sales for most titles tends to be the highest because it also includes all of your preorders all lumped into that first week. It's normal for there to be a fairly steep drop off in week two. In this graph, These Witches Don't Burn (2019) is blue, the sequel This Coven Won't Break (2020) is green, and my vampire book The Coldest Touch (2021) is pink.

My debut has the highest first-week sales (1,180), followed very closely by its sequel (1,169), with my third book trailing behind at 925 copies. When I was writing The Coldest Touch (which I believe is my best work of those YA titles), I thought for sure that--given my existing readership--it would outsell the other books. Instead, it sold less than the others, and continues to sell fewer copies each royalty period. I'm not sure exactly why that is (probably some combination of an COVID release, something about the marketing or cover not quite landing, and luck), but those lower sales also means a sequel won't be happening unless I decide to self-publish one at some point. 

Week 12 Sales:

By the end of each book's initial 90 days, they were each still selling fairly well. My debut continued to outpace the other two books on a week-to-week basis, while TCWB and TCT had pretty equal sales, hovering around 150-170 copies per week while TWDB was more in the 300-400 range. You'll also see in the graph that TCT had a little sales spike on the fourth week. I have... no idea why. That book did come out in early December, so that 4th week might be folks using holiday gift cards? Who knows! 

90-day Totals:

All together, across the first 90 days (per the portal!), TWDB sold the most at 6,087 copies, followed by TCT (3,708), and finally TCWB right behind at 3,582.

That said... the first royalty periods told a slightly different story. 

Each publisher (and each imprint within that publisher) releases royalty statements at different times throughout the year. There's also a 3-month gap between the end of an accounting period and when the royalty statement is actually available. In my case, the royalty periods are October 1 - March 31 and April 1 - Sept 30. I get my March-ending statement at the very end of July and my September-ending statement at the very end of January. Actual royalty payments, when there are any, usually show up within 2-3 weeks after the statement drops.

Depending on when your book comes out, your first royalty statement could include the full six months.... or just a week or two. 

First Royalty Statements:

TWDB's first royalty statement was April 2019 - Sept 2019. The book itself came out at the end of May, so that statement includes about 4 months of sales. It sold 9,745 copies during that time, earning $17,691,52, just shy of the full $20k advance I'd been paid. The book earned out at the next accounting period, which meant I received my very first royalty check in July/August 2020. 

A quick side note before I continue: as far as I can tell from reading my own royalty statements, the way publishers figure out those sales numbers is by taking the number of copies they sent out to stores and then subtracting the number of copies that get returned to them. This is why they'll also hold a "reserve against returns" -- a certain number of copies that they don't "count" as sales until a certain point (based on your contract) because they want to make sure stores don't sent a ton of stock back to the warehouses unsold. This is why you might see sales numbers drop on a subsequent royalty statement or even see negative numbers pop up. I also think this may be the discrepancy between the author portal and the royalty statements, since I think (??) the portal number is tied to actual point of sale? Who knows! The publishers certain don't make it easy to find those answers.

The sequel, TCWB, had its first royalty period April 2020 - Sept 2020, so that first royalty statement came January 2021. On that first statement, TCWB sold 4,409 copies and earned $9,572.57 toward the $20k advance, so about 50% earned out in the first four months.

Finally, TCT (which came out at the beginning of December) had its first royalty period from October 2021 - March 2022. In that time, it sold very similar to TCWB at 4,689 copies, earning $9,997.64 of its $35k advance. Since this advance was higher, it earned 28% of the advance back in the first 4 months.

My July 2025 Royalty Statements

Now, we fast forward six years from the release of my debut to look at this most recent royalty statement. I consider myself very lucky that my books continue to sell so many years after they came out. New readers find their way to these books every week, and I don't take that for granted. 

Before I dig into the specifics of each statement this period, the PRH portal does a nice job of giving an overview summary of all titles even before you open the statements themselves. Here's what this looks like:

As you can see, the portal breaks this down by book and includes your cumulative earnings (your advance plus all royalties), followed by a column for the original advance and then any royalty payments they've previously paid out. The cumulative earnings - your advance (which they call "total guarantees" here) - previous royalty payments gives you the statement balance, which is either the amount of money you are owed for this period (if a positive number) or how much you still have left to earn out (if a negative number). 

For the July 2025 statement, PRH will be sending a total of $2,337.76 in royalties to my previous agent (who sold these books for me). And honestly, that's pretty damn great for books that are 5 and 6 years old. You'll also see my prequel novella, This Spell Can't Last, included in the list, which I didn't touch on in the previous section. That's an ebook only title that didn't have an advance, so the sales on that are a bit different. It didn't make sense to do a full breakdown. 

Now, once my agent receives that payment, she'll subtract her 15% and send me the remaining $1,987.09 for my portion of the royalties. Combining that with the payment I received at the beginning of the year, my total US royalty payments for 2025 will be $4,787.96 (gross) of which I'll receive $4,069.76 after agency fees. 

Again, these are books that came out between 2019-2021, so I am thrilled to continue to receive a few thousand dollars a year on books I haven't touched in ages. This is where publishing can start providing "passive income" -- I literally did fuck all to market these books from October- March and I still get paid for them. 

Obviously, $4k a year is not the kind of money basically anyone can live on.

This year, I also received 3 different portions of the advance for my adult deal: the on-signing payment ($34k), the delivery & acceptance of Book 1 ($21k), and I'm expecting the payment for Book 2's outline ($8.5k) any day now. I also get sporadic foreign rights payments throughout the year, too, which lately tends to be about $1-2k a year.

For those of you doing the math at home, that puts my 2025 author income just shy of $70k. Of course, I need to pull taxes out of that, but that does become a livable income when combined with my coaching business. 

 
So, How Many Copies is That?

Let's break it down.

These Witches Don't Burn (2019 release, $20k advance)

• Total Copies Sold: 70,478
• Copies Sold this Period: 1,258

This Coven Won't Break (2020 release, $20k advance)

• Total Copies Sold: 24,930
• Copies Sold this Period: 294

The Coldest Touch (2021 release, $35k advance)

• Total Copies Sold: 14,564
• Copies Sold this Period: 283

Here's what that looks like on the graph (and it appears there was an ebook sale recently, too):

When I look at those numbers -- both the big picture ones and the current weekly sales numbers -- I make an intentional commitment to remember that those aren't just data points. Those are people. 

Actual humans who took a chance on my books, purchased a copy, and welcomed my stories into their hearts. So even when a book doesn't sell as well as the others, I am so grateful for the thousands of people who still found that title. 

In particular, I've often talked about how TCT under-performed, but I think it's time to let go of that narrative. Because while yes, 14k is much smaller than 70k, that is still a fuck ton of actual humans. If I imagine 14k people all gathered together in one place with a copy of that book in their hands... wow. That is freaking incredible. And I am grateful for every single person who picked up a copy of any of my books.

I hope you feel the same, whether you've sold 100 copies or 100k copies. Either way, that is a lot of humans. It's maybe not as many as you want to reach, but it's a start. Be careful not to discount the people who have engaged with your work. Every single one of them matters. And it's okay to want to grow your reach, too. Both things can be true.

Final Thoughts

Getting comfortable with your sales data takes time, repetition, and a commitment to separating the value and quality of your books from how many copies they ultimately sell. As I mentioned above, I believe The Coldest Touch is the most well-written and compelling of my YA titles, and yet it has also sold the least number of copies. Those sales numbers have nothing to do with how much I adore that book. 

I hope this was helpful, and please do your best to frame this information in a way that feels motivating rather than a reason to feel hopeless or disappointed. No matter how your numbers compare (about the same, much smaller, or way larger than mine), I am so proud of you for being in the game and continuing to write.

Until next week, happy writing.

-Isabel 

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