Just how much money could we raise to help children in war?

After reading my post yesterday, a few folks have danced around this question, but no one has been impolite enough to ask it directly. I want all the information out in the open, however, so I'm going to show you the math. I don't think I'll upset Publisher Toni or anyone else by revealing the basic hardback royalty terms I have, because they are pretty standard. With that data, we can talk about what's possible.

My royalties for this hardback, which as I said are quite standard, work as follows:

10% of the retail cover price on the first 5,000 copies sold

12.5% of the retail cover price on the next 5,000 copies sold

15% of the retail cover price on the first 5,000 copies sold

List price for Children No More is $22.00. (All figures will be US dollars.)

Thus, the arithmetic for some easy sales figures goes like this:

- Selling 5,000 copies => 5,000 * $22.00 * 10% = $11,000

- Selling another 5,000 copies => 5,000 * $22.00 * 12.5% = $13,750 more, or a total of $24,750

- After that, each additional 1,000 copies we sell => 1,000 * $22.00 * 15% = $3,300 more to add to our total

Let's go wild for a moment and assume we can gather a ton of momentum and hit the New York Times bestseller list in the first week--an unlikely outcome, but one that's possible. That would mean selling something like 25,000 hardcovers--again, unlikely, but possible, I have to hope. Doing that would yield $74,250--enough money to do a lot of good, I believe.

I honestly don't think there's much chance we'll get anywhere near those sales figures--but I sure as hell am going to try.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about another of the most common questions I received today: What can I do to help?