Normally authors are paid on a per book basis. The percentage that an author receives per book sale is termed royalty and constitutes anywhere between 7.5 to 15% of book MRP (maybe more for established and famous writers)
Authors may or may not be paid an advance depending on the publishers policies. However, usually every decent publisher pays an advance to the authors whose book they decide to publish.
The basic business model of trade fiction publishing is this:
- Buy publishing services as efficiently as possible. For example, it's much more economical to hire an editor to edit twelve books a year, on a salary, than it is to hire twelve freelance editors. It's much cheaper, per-book, to print ten thousand books than ten. Economies of scale are a lot of what publishing is about.
- Spread the risk as much as possible. Publishing a book is risky, so have a wide portfolio of investments, and hope that your hits outweigh your misses.
The relationship between author and publisher is essentially a partnership. It usually works like this:
- The publisher pays a lump sum up front for the right to publish the book. This sum is described as an 'advance against royalties', which I'll get to in a minute.
- The author gets the benefit of thousands of dollars worth of publishing services - editing, design, marketing, etc.
