Smaller share of game revenue might have been worth as much (Gaming)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Sunday, March 26, 2017, 06:10 (2809 days ago) @ Cody Miller
edited by narcogen, Sunday, March 26, 2017, 06:21

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-witcher-author-refused-a-profit-sharing-deal-with-cd-projekt-it-was-stupid/

The dude who wrote the stories the Witcher games were based on refused a percentage of the games' profits,

Yeah but was it net profit or gross profits? A percentage of net is a percentage of nothing.

Games also retail for $60 (less on PC in various markets).

Trade paperbacks go for what, $6-7?

I've honestly no idea if gaming is as bad as Hollywood in terms of making even the most obviously profitable properties look like failures, at least on the level where you involve all your external funding, but even a tiny slice of the Witcher games right now I bet is worth more than what he gets off his novels.

The game series has topped 20M in sales now. Up until the popularity of the games, the books were largely restricted to his home market and extensions of it-- Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia etc. It's very likely that even all the novels together didn't sell 20M copies; the population of Poland itself is only a tad under 40M.

Even if every man, woman and child in Poland bought one of his books each, that's 40M sales x $7 a sale for a total revenue figure of $280M. Industry author royalty rates range from 8% - 15% for paperback and hardcover. Let's assume Sapkowski is a big enough deal in Poland that he gets the maximum-- so that means 42M for him. Not too shabby! However, it's probably an overestimation, as that would put the series in the same worldwide sales category as To Kill A Mockingbird.

Then again, 20M copies of Witcher games at an average price of, say, $40, would be $600M. He sees none of that. So it's possible the stake he was offered in the game is at least as valuable, and possibly more valuable, as his stake in the novels.

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-witcher-author-refused-a-profit-sharing-deal-with-cd-projekt-it-was-stupid/

http://attackofthefanboy.com/news/witchers-success-negatively-impacted-books-says-author-witcher-novels/

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/03/24/the-witcher-book-author-doesnt-profit-from-the-games

https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/49iows/how_many_books_did_the_witcher_games_help_to_sell/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#Between_30_million_and_50_million_copies

https://electricliterature.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-book-sales-but-were-afraid-to-ask-1fe6bc00aa2d#.pm...

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/the-wages-of-writing/

http://www.slj.com/2016/03/research/sljs-average-book-prices-for-2016/