How Much Money Do Best Selling Authors Actually Make?

All right.

So I got curious about something. I saw this. So there's this guy named Mark Manson. Mark Manson has this book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Then he created a couple spinoffs from it. So I'll tell you quick, a funny story. So this book, uh, was the bestselling book of 2020, I believe, or '19, either '19 or '20. I forget the exact year. Um, and it, or maybe even prior, but before that actually, but it sold like many, many millions copies of books. I actually had a dinner at a conference with Tucker, who we were just talking about, and Mark Manson sat next to me and I was talking to him and I was like, so what do your parents think about your job? And he goes, well, they kind of make fun of me and ask when I'm going to get a real job. Um, they don't really know what I do. They just think I play on the computer all day and I play video games all day. They don't truly understand like what I'm doing, but they kind of understood it this year when they released a report for New York Times saying I sold more books than Hillary Clinton. So that's when they, that's when they kind of understood what I do. And so, uh, that's a funny story about Mark, but I looked up, uh, I was, I was curious about something about him and I Googled and the first article came out that he had a condo in New York City that he recently sold for $14 million. And I got curious about that because I think that book, I was like, books can't make that much money. Can they? And Atomic Habits this year sold, or so far has sold around 5 million books in total. And this year Atomic Habits was the best-selling book on Amazon in 2020. Um, or 2021. And I was curious about how much bookmakers, uh, authors make. So I, I have a friend, I can't talk about his name, but he sold 30,000 copies of a book that was published on a major publisher. And I wanna explain to you how much money he made.

By the way, and that 30,000, that's a ton. That's like in the top 1 percentile, you know, I think of books. Yes.

This book is in bookstores and it's probably in the airport and things like that. So they were given— they didn't have a book before. They were given a $250,000 advance, which is basically just like, uh, here's $250,000, go pay you a year.

Yeah.

And, and go write the book. Um, off that $30,000 in books, they have not made a cent in royalty or licensing fees. And he told me that when he was looking at the contract, he doesn't even entirely understand when he's gonna get paid. Passed that amount and he only gets paid like pennies on the dollar for every like $14 book sold. And he said, he's like, I— he goes, basically I get paid. They spent a certain amount of money to help me make this book and they get paid once it surpass— I get paid once it surpasses that amount. But I can't even understand in the paperwork how much they spent it, like including everyone's salaries on doing this and publishing and things like that. But I have made, he said, uh, an additional $400,000 this year on selling other stuff. Like courses and coaching and consulting, which wouldn't have happened because, uh, which happened because of the book. But basically on 30,000 copies sold, he has not made a cent other than the $250. And he told me that his editor wasn't that good, that he had to spend a little bit of money, uh, get, getting their, his own editor and that their marketing people weren't that great. And I found it to be very interesting. And so I looked up Dan Bilzerian, Dan Bilzerian, you know who he is, the Instagram guy. He self-published his book. And so Dan Bilzerian's book, it costs $35 and he has a Shopify store that sells it. You can't buy it on Amazon. And it works for Dan Bilzerian because he just posts a link on Instagram and he goes viral. But David Goggins did it as well. And so anyway, this whole publishing kind of thing got me interested because these people do not— I guess Mark Manson, he must have crushed it somehow. But for someone who sells 30,000 books, they don't make shit off their, off their books. And I found it to be incredibly fascinating. I guess if you're like Ryan Holiday, I heard that he makes— he does good, but a lot of people, they just don't get paid.

Well, I think it's two things. It's if you take an advance, the economic— and it's your first book, the economics are gonna be super skewed against you. If you, um, if you have multiple hits like a Ryan Holiday, then, you know, by the time you negotiate your third book deal, you're gonna have much better economics in the thing. You know, Tim Ferriss probably made more off his last book than he did off the first book, which is the bestseller. Um, And then the last thing is self-publishing, you know, changing the game in a way. So, you know, let's say a book sells for $13.99 or whatever, $14, um, you know, I think it's gonna be like probably, uh, you know, $7, $8 of just the cost of the book plus shipping to get it to a customer. And, you know, so you're left with $4 or $5, uh, at the end to play with. Now, whether that goes all in your pocket or your publisher's pocket, I think that depends on how you negotiate. But even if you just take $4 per copy, you know, 5 million copies sold for Atomic Habits. You know, I would believe that he's grossed, you know, $20 million, $30 million in sales or sort of like gross profit off that. Now, I don't know what his deal was. If he's— I don't know if he's self-published or what.

Well, 5 million books times $14 is $70,000— $70 million. So the revenue on that, I would bet, is in the $50 to $100 million range. Yeah, that huge ballpark. But I don't know what a guy like him would make, but I bet you he could get paid like many thousands an hour to come and talk. I mean, I bet you it would cost him $50,000 to show up at a boardroom in New York to give a discussion, to give a talk.

I just got paid $8,000 to do a Zoom call for 1 hour.

Really?

To give a talk. And so that means that somebody who's the author of Atomic Habits is definitely commanding, you know, $25,000, $50,000 per talk. That's crazy. And now maybe it's digital.

That's crazy. So anyway, I thought this was interesting. And, uh, it's, it shocked me writing a book because you're going through this. I knew you're, I know you're, or you're thinking about going through. I don't know how far, how far you are.

I basically paid to write the book and now I got to write the book this year. So that'll happen.

Uh, and so yeah, I don't, I would predict that you don't make money directly off of it, but I imagine there will be money made in some ways.

Yeah. I think a book is a pretty horrible way to make money. So I'm just doing it for fun.