Most publishers/distributers charge P&P at about 10% on which royalties are NOT paid. We usually do not charge P&P and so pay slightly higher royalties.

Example:
ZigZag sells a resource for £30 (inclusive of P&P - about £3) and another publisher sells the same resource for £27 + £3p&p

Royalties due from ZigZag per sale at 12.5% royalty rate
12.5% x 30 = £3.75

Royalties due from the other publisher per sale at 12.5% royalty rate
12.5% x 27 = £3.275 (royalty rate would need to be 13.88% to be the same!)

Companies offering sliding scale offers in our experience end up paying much lower overall royalties. Sliding scale is offered with the suggestion that higher rates are usually achieved when in our experience this is not the case - sales from such companies can be extremely and sometimes surprisingly low - ending up with the lowest rates payable on very low sales. This is the experience of several of our writers who have switched from such companies.

Our standard royalty of 12.5% (13.75%*) can always be replaced by a sliding scale from 10%-25% depending on sales achieved. By offering a single, generous but realistic royalty rate we offer clarity in our payments. Occasionally specific high-selling resources do achieve the increased rates. Please email if you are interested in a sliding scale offer or would like to know if this is likely to be an advantage to you. Currently we only have one author who has a sliding scale contract and they have indeed achieved an increased royalty rate giving them royalties of over £2000 in less than 6 months for their single resource.