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I am the literary executor of my father's estate. A relative has started work on producing a (probably very) limited non-professional edition of my father's 1938-45 war diary. I need to strike a royalty agreement with her, so that in the extremely unlikely event of this edition becoming a bestseller, I have duly and diligently carried out my duties and obligations under the will.
I propose to strike a reasonable commercial royalty rate, but with a provision that it doesn't kick in until at least all her costs have been covered and something well over, say ,000, has been received, which in my opinion is far beyond the bounds of probability.
But I'm wondering what exactly that royalty rate should be.
The labour on her part is considerable, as it involves transcribing tens of thousands of words of highly illegible handwriting, scanning photographs and newspaper clippings, executing typography and graphic design, and getting it printed and bound somehow.
On the other hand the text is not her property, and indeed it was possibly with some surprise that she learnt she could only copyright the edition, not the original text, which must bear its own copyright notice. And I have my obligations to the Probate Division of the Supreme Court and the residuary legatees.
So I'm looking for suggestions.
EDIT I am not looking for suggestions about how to deal with a literary estate. I am not the publisher. I am not carrying any risk or investing anything in the project. I am in the position of an author with a pre-existing text here, and I am asking what royalty rate I should be aiming at, in line with reasonable commercial practice, and given that my relative is not Scribners or Macmillan. I am thinking anywhere between 15%, which is what I get from Addison Wesley and Springer, and 40-50% given that the publisher won't have a large investment in stock or advertising.
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Normally the royalty rate you find online are calculated on the cover price, so 40% is very high.
The "reasonable range" is more line 10-25% with 15% being the most common. (25% for ebook, where there are no printing cost)
But the single number is not really important: the rate you are asking could not (and normally is not) be a fixed number: often royalty rates increase according to the number of books sold.
For example:
from 0 to X copies: 0% (to cover the transcription labour)
from X to Y copies: 10%
from Y to Z copies: 15%
[...]
I cannot advise you without more information. You need to trust each other as 'fair and reasonable' and agree to formalise any 'ballpark' agreement at a later date, or suffer the increased overhead of involving two lawyers (one each) negotiating an agreement on an unlikely outcome.
There a simple too many variables.
Scenario 1: The book is self-published on both digital and dead tree platforms. You promote the work via a nationwide tour. How are your costs considered in the agreement?
Scenario 2: The book is vanity published. You sell 3 copies and the other 19,997 are held (at a cost) in a storage facility until they are burned on Guy Fawkes night. - Who is liable for the loss.
Scenario 3: The rights are purchased by a major publisher. You accept a ,000 advance. The money is split in accordance with your agreement. The book is a flop. The publisher goes bust. The liquidator demands the ADVANCE be returned. Who's liable?
Unless your father is a celebrity or a person of significant notoriety his diaries are of no value. Therefore, the success could be down to your relative's writing skills.
Your desire to publish this story may be deemed 'vanity' on your part and deemed as a 'labour of love' on part of your relative.
If it all went wrong I'm confident a judge (whether or not a contract is in place) would encourage you to 'work it out'.
Without more information I'd advise you not spend money on a contingency for unlikely event.
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