For most of the time I spent working on my book, I thought I knew what it was ultimately about: amateurism, the arrangement through which colleges are able to utilize unpaid labor to fuel their entertainment arms.
I learned late in the game that while my hunch was right, I hadn’t fully proven it — to myself or in the book. More specifically, I hadn’t traced the evolution of amateurism from conception all the way to the quads of Chapel Hill. (I rushed to correct that in the book, a process I wrote about here.)
I had the privilege of tracing this evolution in a podcast episode released yesterday. “The Experiment,” a production of The Atlantic and WNYC Studios, did an episode all about the amateur myth and how it related to the recent Supreme Court ruling on payments to athletes. I talked with friend-of-the-newsletter and Atlantic staff writer Adam Harris about the origin of the amateur ideal, the ways it has been contorted, and how those contortions came to a head in Chapel Hill a decade ago.
They did a fantastic job distilling such a complex topic into something so accessible. I recommend you listen, as a little appetizer for my book and a reminder of its relevance today. Among other things, I’m glad they included my observation about how going to a UNC basketball game is a lot like going to church. (This would be a great dissertation for someone.)
You can find the episode here.
A word about money
Making money was an aspect of book writing I didn’t know a thing about until I wrote one. I figure the same might be true for you, so I want to pull back the curtain a little on what I’m actually making from this book.
Here’s how it works, in brief: I pocket a small percentage of the sale of each hardcover book, a percentage that increases the more copies that sell. Specifically, I earn 2 percent royalties on copies 1 to 500, 5 percent on copies 501 to 1,000, 8 percent on copies 1,001 to 10,000, and 10 percent on all copies after that.
My book costs $24.95. And, last I heard, 331 copies of my book have been preordered. So if you buy it at full price, I get $0.50 on that purchase. If you buy it at the 30-percent discount currently offered by the press, I get $0.35 per copy. According to a breakdown the press shared with me, most of the copies that have sold have been discounted. I did the math, and worked out that I’ve earned about $123 in royalties so far. (This is my back-of-the-envelope math, and relies on some assumptions that I haven’t confirmed with the press, so don’t quote me.)
You might be thinking, that’s not a lot for how much work you put into this. And it’s true. But I’m not complaining. As a first-time author with no name recognition or track record, I knew a lucrative deal wasn’t gettable, and that money was never the point of this project. The University of Michigan Press gave me a shot, and that’s all I wanted. I’m glad I did it this way.
That being said, I’d love to be pocketing a higher percentage of each sale. You can help me do that by preordering my book yourself, or telling the reader in your life to do so. Let’s reach copy #500 together!
This situation isn’t typical of most of the books you read. The authors of trade books you see on bestseller lists typically get large advances — think hundreds of thousands of dollars — when they sign their contracts. Then, after the book is out, they don’t pocket any new money until the royalties they make under the formula in their contract eclipse the value of the advance. (Smaller advances are also common, I gather.)
I hope that’s useful info, or, ideally, that it motivates you to finally preorder my book. Next week I’ll be giving you some more details on the August 31 virtual event that I hope many of you will be attending.
— Andy
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