So i was wondering how much do publishers pay authors to write a non-fiction book? For example, how much authors receive for writing books for "For Dummies" series? Do they pay them up-front like $20,000 or just royalties?

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Typically the literary agent will negotiate the advance, and then the author recieves a royalty (minus the advance.)

This depends on how good your story is and how much they think it will make. I read a book where a girl about 12 had a good story that got $6,000 (it was a fiction story). Not sure. Look it up on Google or something.

Depends on the author, on the publisher and on the subject. Obviously a non-fiction book with a focus on some esoteric information is going to be of interested to a limited market, and won't be a big seller, while a non-fiction book that outlines what will happen when the world ends has the potential to be a huge seller. Whether authors get paid up-front or in royalties is a matter for negotiation between the author (or the author's agent) and the publisher. There are no hard and fast rules. No union scale.

Professional literary agent Rachelle Gardner describes, roughly, how the royalties and advances work. You'll notice that even writers on the "higher" end aren't making much. http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/search/label/Advances%20%2B%20Royalties Something to keep in mind: Non-fiction and fiction books differ greatly when it comes to credentials. If a fiction book reads well then it won't matter if the author isn't really an astronaut. Fiction writers can be creative in that way. It's different for non-fiction though. If you write a book on organic foods or psychology your potential agent will expect you to qualify your background. Have you written articles in agricultural journals and given lectures at universities? You'll need some sort of professional background to really have an edge. Unless you're talking about memoirs and the like, in which case an educational and professional background might not be necessary.

Money on signing contract, not much, a few $1000 say $2000, maybe less for a new author, then a % of book sales around 10% or less so perhaps making $1 or $2 a book, and the print run may be only 5000 - 10000 books. So for all the work most people would be better working selling fries.

They get paid upfront via an advance, but it depends on the contract. Once the advance is paid back (through the author's royalties in book sales) then the author will start collecting direct royalties from book sales, so it's not either you get an advance or you get royalties. The author is paying you some of the royalties in advance. Once you start selling books, the publisher will keep your portion of the royalties until recoup their advance. When that happens is when you start getting direct royalties from each book sale yourself. If that makes sense. How much you get paid in advance depends on too many variables. It depends on if it's a hardcover or softcover. Whether you have an agent negotiating your contract or you're doing it yourself; statistics show people with agents get paid more money. It depends on if the publisher is small, mid-sized, or large. Obviously the larger publishers have more money to pay you while a small publisher doesn't.