We consider ourselves to be an ethical publishing company, and therefore we want to reward contributors with royalties for their efforts and expertise in bringing these books to life.
To set the scene, most academic publishing houses offer 0% in royalties to authors, and it is common in the publishing industry to offer 9% (sometimes as much as 12%, but often less) in royalties to authors. Our typical deal is to offer 30% royalties to the contributor team for every project.
Royalties are calculated on profit from each sale. So if a book sells for its RRP of £15, and costs (for the sake of example) £5 to print, this gives a profit of £10 on the sale. The contributing team will receive their 30% royalties on this figure.
What do we do with the remaining profits? We use them to pay taxes (we can’t escape them!) and the inevitable admin and legal expenses that come with running a company in the UK. We use the income to support worthy causes, for advertising and marketing, for upgrading and improving our IT systems, for purchasing the software and hardware we need to make the books a reality, and to purchase stock so that we always have physical copies of books ready for dispatch, or for taking to events. Our profits are reinvested in the company, to improve what we can offer our contributors and our readers, and to make the whole publishing process easier and faster and less painful, from start to finish.
At the end of the day, we want to reward our contributors, we want to improve what we can offer to readers, and we want to be an ethical publishing house.