The 5% royalty is indeed a newcomer's conscience price, and many newcomers are not even eligible to obtain royalties, and directly sell them at the price of Chinese cabbage such as two or three hundred thousand words.

If you want to make money by writing a book, unless you have a very large background or the quality of the book is extremely high, it is difficult to get royalty income when you are a debut novel.

But Lin Han didn't have such an idea, what he got was a novel that has been selling well on the earth for decades, this "I, Robot" has been sold in dozens of countries around the world since its birth in the fifties of the 20th century, and has been translated into the world's major languages and minor languages.

Even in the 21st century, there are still several publishing houses in Chinese mainland that have completed the translation work, and named one of the Galaxy Empire series of books, and even praised as a science fiction bible by Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House, and its sales on Beijing-Dong, Dangdang, Amazon and other websites have been very high, and it is one of the children's favorite extracurricular books.

Needless to say, sales in Europe and the United States have been growing steadily, and even thanks to the sci-fi movie of the same name starring Will Smith, "I, Robot", this 50-year-old novel once again topped the top 10 of the New York Times book sales list around 2004, creating a myth in the science fiction world.

The only science fiction novels that can safely surpass this book are Verne's "20,000 Years Under the Sea" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth", which are specially listed as required reading items in textbooks.

If Lin Han handed over the simplified publishing rights like this, the original author might want to strangle this loser.

He had discussed the issue of royalties with Chen Jiaxuan before, so he still had some understanding of these ratios, knowing that his book would sell millions of copies or more, and if he didn't bargain, it would be really a ruin.

So he said: "Mr. Zhao, as an ordinary rookie author, I think it's a good thing to be published, but I also have a literary agent, and she has already helped me contact the "Science Fiction World", and the introduction and first chapter of this novel will be published in the December issue, I wonder if this will affect the publication?"

Zhao Han's face remained unchanged, and he regretted in his heart, what kind of literary agent does a rookie author do, who doesn't know that those agents are vampires, and they can't wait to dig more benefits from the publishing house.

If a publishing house wants to publish a book smoothly, it needs to invest extraordinary manpower and material resources, such as editing, art, typesetting, proofreading, printing, distribution, and finance.

For example, a book priced at 30 yuan and 10,000 copies are sold, and the author's royalty is 5%, then the money the author can get is 30*10,000*5%=15,000.

If the number of sales is small, then it is better to calculate the author's manuscript fee according to the royalty than to sign a buyout directly, so when on earth, many publishing houses have become a problem to operate, and they can only rely on selling book numbers and receiving sponsorships to make a living.

Fortunately, the copyright protection in this world is good, piracy does not dare to take the lead easily, and people's reading atmosphere is also very good, and basically the publishing house can make a healthy profit.

If the release price of a book is 50 yuan, then the publishing house can basically only earn about 5 yuan, and most of the rest are costs, including the author's remuneration and revision costs, rental costs, raw materials and auxiliary materials costs, plate making costs, printing (production) costs, publication losses, cataloging expenses, management expenses, financial expenses, operating expenses, etc.

However, all kinds of bookstores and online books will have certain discounts, and few novels are sold according to the price, basically seven or eight discounts, so the profit margin is naturally lower.

Anyone who has ever published knows that books are not necessarily sold after printing, there are always returns, unsalable and damaged, and the scrap rate of most publishing houses is about 10%, and a small number is set at 20%, which is a big loss.

Finally, we can't forget to pay taxes, and the current tax rate of 1.13 will also share the profits, so the publishing house is not as profitable as imagined.

As the saying goes, if the more books are sold, then the printing cost is actually lower and lower, so the more best-selling books, the more money they make.

Li Wenyuan gave Lin Han a thumbs up in his heart, it would be a great loss if the book only signed 5% royalties, as long as the publicity of the People's Congress Publishing House was a little more serious, he could harvest a novel with quite good sales.

Lin Han is not short of publishers to contact now, he has his own confidence, the quality of the book "I, Robot" is his biggest weight, and a discerning person will definitely not push this out.

Zhao Han also saw that this novel had a tendency to sell well, so he took out a business card from his pocket and said with a smile: "Xiaolin, if you have time in the afternoon, you can ask your agent to talk about this matter, and it is better to publish the novel earlier, so many of us are waiting for the latter part of the novel!"

"No problem, I'll send her a message right away, and then we can sit down and talk slowly. Lin Han shrugged his shoulders, just at this time the waiter began to serve the food, so he continued: "Let's eat first, this is the most important thing." ”

Chinese talk about business basically at the dinner table wine table, today Zhao Han because he has to negotiate with the agent later, so he restrained the idea of drinking, in case of drinking, accidentally show the bottom line, that is the big trouble.

After lunch, the group separated, Li Wenyuan sent Tong Yonglie out of the National People's Congress, while the other two professors went back to work, leaving only Lin Han, Zhao Han and Liu Jun, two people from the National People's Congress Publishing House, chatting in the teahouse not far away.

The People's Congress Publishing House is a well-known brand in the country, it is the first university press after the founding of New China, but now it is in a semi-detached state, the establishment of a publishing house group, corporatized operation, under its many branches, such as economic publishing branch, business administration, law, examination, education, academic publishing, audio-visual publishing house, applied technology branch and popular book publishing center.

Zhao Han happens to be the vice president in charge of the popular publishing center, which is mainly based on public-oriented publications, such as novels, autobiographies, various translations and some guidance, which are more civilian than the professional books above, and everyone can understand them.

When Chen Jiaxuan arrived in a Maserati, Lin Han was relieved, he was not good at dealing with people, especially such an old fox, who was taking his bottom line every minute.

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