Politico - The Secret of Bernie's Millions

[torius]

30. You don't make money when you buy your own books

Last edited Sun May 26, 2019, 02:14 PM - Edit history (1)

You don’t make money when you buy your own books. You can make some profit selling them. He would make money if he sold a whole lot himself—a few dollars per book. But the sales of the book are not that high.

When you buy your own books they are in bulk, so those do not go into your books that you get royalties on. Even if it’s just one box of books. You buy in bulk and you get a discount.

If your book does not earn out, meaning earn back the advance via royalties (not cover price—royalties are a small percent—usually around 10%—some publishers offer zero) then technically you owe them the rest of the money. An advance is just that, an advance against royalties. So if he writes another book with that publisher (and likely they get first dibs), they could simply not pay him an advance or royalties until his other book earns out. (Publishers don’t usually go after people to repay their advance.) 99% of books do not earn out.

Buying your own book also does not get you on publications’ (such as NYT) bestseller lists. That’s not that easy to game. Books you buy go into your total sales number but that does not help you get on those weekly lists.

He did get a big advance. Plus any profits from selling his own books if he kept the profits. Maybe they have go to the campaign if they were sold at campaign stops, I don’t know. There are costs associated with selling, simply transporting and selling the books costs in labor, transaction fees, and transportation.

I just don’t think this thing about him getting rich off from buying his own books makes sense if you know how publishing works. There’s no guarantee that people will buy them, you have to spend money buying them, and you get no royalties from the publisher for those books.