Posted by Hemant Mehta in Last year, it was a few months before my students found out about my book.
This year, it took two days.
I’ve already had this conversation:
Student: I bought your book on Amazon! Do you get any money for that?
Me: Well, yeah, I do get royalties.
Student: Do you get royalties if I bought a used copy for $1.87?
Me: Umm… no, I don’t think so. Maybe three cents.
Student (smiling): You’re welcome.
Ooooh, and I noticed the SSA donation bar move up. If every visitor could donate $.03, that would be something, right?
Hemant, I would be your favorite student. If only I was born closer to your school…
A future supply-side economist, obviously.
You definitely get squat on second hand books (not 3 cents).
Royalties come out of what the publisher gets on books they sell, but with a second-hand book -
(i) they already paid you royalties on the initial sale of the book when it was new (which is all the money they’ll ever get for it), and
(ii) even if they wanted to give you royalties on re-sold books, they don’t even know it’s been re-sold.
Do you know how many have been sold? or how widely they’ve been sold? I’ve got a copy 4,000 (ish) miles from you or a quarter round the globe, based on you being 6 hours behind England. Do you know what the average price is? Is your royalty fee fixed or is it a percentage of the sale price?
You could have all sorts of mathematically themed questions featuring your book. That should be a lesson to outspoken students.