Let’s say I’m in a random small town in a random country, I go to the local book store and buy a book and pay, let’s say, by cash. This then counts as a sold copy of said book. How does my money from this random place, reach the author?
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The author is paid by the publisher, usually with riders concerning percentages based on sales, etc.. The store purchases either from the publisher directly, or from a wholesaler. Then, when you purchase the book, the money goes to the store.
The books have already been purchased from the publisher up-front so they can be put on shelves to sell to you. So if a store bought 100 books for resale and then never sold a single copy, the publisher can still claim they have “sold 100 copies”.
The book was already bought by the bookstore from the publisher. When the publisher sold it, the publisher counted the book as sold in its books, and every month or quarter or whatever is in the contract with the author, the publisher counted up how many books were sold and sent the total royalty payment to the author.
If you want to support an author, buy the book directly from the publisher. They can get up to 50% of the retail cost of the book they wrote vs the $0.50 per book Amazon gives.
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