It normally runs between $10,000 and $50,000 for non-celebrities. That's presuming your book doesn't sell for more than your advance. The normal author remuneration is a 15% royalty on the cover price. When all is said and done, the average cost per book sold is roughly $1.3 million. The highest selling cookbook author in the world is Spain's Paula Wolfert, who has written 14 books on Mediterranean cuisine. She has earned over $80 million (60 million euros) with her recipes that appear in publications across the globe. Other big names include Martha Stewart ($140 million), Ina Garten ($20 million), and Rachael Ray ($15 million). As for me, I've only ever had one book deal offer me money worth mentioning. It was from Penguin/Berkley Books when I was first starting out. They offered me an advance of $150,000 (about £90,000). I thought this was pretty good money at the time but not enough to make any real difference. Also, I knew I'd need to find another source of income to live on while I wrote the book. Since then, I've been mostly self-published so there's no way to know what my earnings might be if I signed with a bigger company.