Several of my friends have asked how much I make per book sale. Not only do I not mind sharing this information, it’s very easy to figure this out within a few cents for any book published using the same methods.

My paperback is printed on-demand through Amazon’s CreateSpace arm. CreateSpace has a publicly available royalty calculator where you can see roughly how much anyone using their services is making per paperback.

Here’s a screenshot of the royalty calculator with my paperback’s info filled in.

They state on that screen that the calculator is for estimation purposes. In my case, the USD number is correct: for each $12.99 paperback sale, I make $4.04. That is, of course, only for purchases through Amazon.com. My paperback is listed at £8.47 on Amazon.co.uk, which is not exactly the same as the £8.48 that this calculator suggests, so the exchange rates have presumably changed since I set up my book.

For the Kindle, the standard royalty is 70% of the purchase price for sales in the U.S., UK, and a slew of other countries. The Kindle version of my book is listed at $7.99, so this means I make $5.59 per sale.

The two methods I detailed are the main ways I expect my book to sell, but there are other variants. For example, if a bookstore decides to pick up a paperback printed through CreateSpace, the author makes significantly less than he/she would selling the same book through Amazon. I would make $1.44/paperback if a bookstore picked up my book.

The important thing from my perspective is, of course, how much each sale equates to in dog toys. We go through dog toys very quickly.

Obviously toy prices will vary, but it looks like one paperback sale is roughly equivalent to purchasing three squeaky balls.

Maisie developed a fondness for squeaky balls during her three knee surgeries, so this is the toy we go through the quickest. We do, however, have to replace others as well…her destruction knows no bounds.

Fortunately, the profit from each Kindle sale is slightly higher ($1.55 more), so we can apply that to the more expensive toys, like these happy little bees. Each Kindle sale equates to two bees.

So there you have it. Book sales mean happy dogs!