We see the price on a book cover: $18, $22, sometimes $25…
For the reader, the “value of the book” seems to be right there.
But the money that actually reaches the author usually looks nothing like that price.
In fact, unless you are a bestseller or writing in a highly commercial genre, making a living from book income has become the exception rather than the rule in many countries. For example, according to the Authors Guild’s 2023 income survey, the median “book-related income” for all authors in 2022 was just $2,000, while for full-time authors the median book income was $10,000. (Book income includes advances, royalties, and subsidiary rights.)
On the UK side, research supported by the ALCS states this even more bluntly: writing alone does not provide an income consistent with the minimum wage. The median freelance income for authors whose primary occupation is writing is £7,000, and the report explicitly notes that this is “not consistent with earning a living wage.”
So why does this happen?
When a reader buys a book for $20, that $20 does not go straight into the publisher’s pocket.
Distributors, retailers (chain stores or online platforms), logistics, and return risks all reduce the amount to a “net” figure. Some contracts calculate royalties not on the list price but on net revenue. While “net revenue” may sound reasonable, in practice it often includes many deductions.
The European Writers’ Council’s 2024 contract analysis illustrates this perfectly: “28% of net proceeds may sound generous, but for print books it can translate into only 13–17% of the actual retail price.”
So the issue isn’t just “what percentage,” but what base that percentage is applied to.
The industry often talks about common royalty ranges by format (for example, 5–15% for print, 20–25% of net for e-books). But here is the critical detail: most of these percentages are not calculated from the price the reader has in mind, but from a discounted or net base. The result? The reader pays $20, and in some scenarios the author’s share comes close to “the price of a coffee.”
The table below is illustrative but fully aligned with real industry logic (no company names, easy to share).
The goal is to show why “author percentage” alone can be misleading.
Scenario A — Royalty calculated on list price (more transparent)
Scenario B — Royalty calculated on net revenue (most debated)
The same “10%” statement… one equals $2.00, the other $0.80.
The difference comes not from the author’s percentage, but from the base to which that percentage is applied.
This is where the fairness question begins:
The reader buys “$20 worth of value”; the author is at the core of creating that value.
Yet mathematically, the author is often placed at the very end of the chain.
This question becomes even harder to answer when you put these two data points side by side:
Together, these figures say one thing clearly: even though the system produces many books as cultural value, it fails to provide sustainable income for the majority of authors.
Traditional publishing relies on contracts, reports, and delayed settlements to define who earns what.
NFBchain replaces this uncertainty with protocol-level rules.
At the core of NFBchain is a simple but powerful idea:
royalties are not negotiated after the fact; they are encoded and enforced at the moment a book is created.
When a book is published on NFBchain, its economic rules are defined once:
These parameters are written into smart contracts at minting time and cannot be changed retroactively.
If terms ever need to change, a new edition must be minted; the original rights remain untouched.
Each primary or secondary sale is executed through an on-chain Sale Router / Escrow mechanism:
No payment can occur without ownership transfer, and no ownership transfer can occur without royalties being paid. This eliminates delayed settlements and reporting ambiguity.
Unlike traditional publishing, where second-hand sales generate zero income for creators, every NFB supports perpetual secondary royalties:
Books become long-lived digital assets rather than one-time transactions.
For each book edition, NFBchain creates a dedicated Royalty Vault:
Authors no longer wait months for reports; revenue exists as a traceable balance.
In traditional publishing, fairness depends on trust.
In NFBchain, fairness depends on infrastructure.
The question shifts from:
“Do we trust the system to be fair?”
to:
“Can the system technically be unfair?”
With programmable royalties, immutable rules, and transparent settlement, NFBchain makes unfairness not just undesirable but structurally impossible.
For years, the same question has been asked: “How much does an author earn from a book?”
Maybe it’s time to ask a different one:
Do we really find this distribution fair?
If your answer leans toward “no”… NFBchain offers a different way forward.
NFB is a blockchain-based digital publishing model that transforms books from access-only licenses into truly ownable digital assets. In traditional digital publishing, readers usually purchase limited access tied to a platform, without the ability to transfer, resell, or fully control the content they pay for. With NFBs, a book is minted as a unique on-chain asset, giving the reader verifiable ownership recorded on the blockchain. This allows books to be transferred, gifted, or resold on secondary markets while preserving transparent ownership history. At the same time, NFBs enable programmable royalties, ensuring that authors and publishers automatically receive their share whenever the book changes hands. As a result, NFB introduces a more transparent, fair, and sustainable digital publishing ecosystem built on true ownership rather than temporary access.
