Minor Thoughts on Advances
There’s been some chatter in various writers groups and suchlike about this article: Book Authors Are Getting Real About How Much They Are Paid. Most of what I can say about it, in response, has been said by Larry Correia and John Scalzi, but I think there are a few minor points that bear mentioning.
One – an advance is called an advance because that’s precisely what it is. It’s an advance on monies the publisher believes the book will earn. If you’re just starting out, with no social profile at all, you’ll get a very low advance; if you have a well-deserved reputation as a money-maker and/or you have lots of fans, you’ll get much bigger advances.
Two – once an advance is paid, you rarely see anything more until the book recoups the publisher’s investment. If, for example, it costs roughly £20K to publish a book, you won’t see a penny more until it earns over 20K.
Three – it can get very sticky indeed if the book fails to earn back its advance. If your book does not earn itself out … well, best-case, the beancounters will probably refuse to greenlight publishing another book of yours. Worst-case, they’ll demand the money back and/or refuse to release the rights so you can self-publish the book. And the other publishers will take note too. Put crudely, a big advance can easily become an anvil around your neck.
Four – the big publishers can afford to take certain risks with advances that look big to the human eye, but aren’t that big relative to their budgets. Small publishers cannot afford to take the risk, to the point they only offer small advances or none. Even a mid-size publisher can run into trouble if they invest heavily in a flop. Baen Books – depending on which version you believe – invested heavily in 1945 by Bill Fortschen and Newt Gingrich during the height of Gingrich’s popularity. The book came out at a very bad moment, the company took a massive financial hit and came very close to complete collapse.
Five – because of the previous four factors, most advances are very low. The big figures mentioned by the article are the exception, not the rule.
Six – it’s very easy to start comparing apples to oranges. A book that fits into a niche market (MIL-SF) may not make the jump into a genre market (SF), let alone go mainstream. The advances for niche books are generally lower because the publishers believe, rightly or wrongly, that the pool of potential customers is smaller. A book written by a famous name – a politician or sports star or whatever – will be seen as appealing to the name’s fans and thus garner a bigger advance. (Note that such a personage will have more clout when it comes to demanding a bigger advance.)
Seven – and this is the controversial part – pushing authors based on anything apart from writing skill is always hazardous. The vast majority of readers don’t care about the author; they don’t care about sex or skin colour or religion or habits or anything, beyond writing skill. It’s very easy for a big publisher to assume a book that appeals to them will appeal to everyone, which is frankly untrue.
Is there actually a disparity between advances paid to white authors and everyone else? I don’t know, because it is very hard to compare two authors without eliminating all the other factors. Did someone, for example, sell so well the first time around that the publisher hyped the next advance? Or were sales lower than predicted and the publisher didn’t feel like taking a chance again? For all the white authors mentioned in the article as getting huge advances, how many white authors – and POC authors – got smaller or no advances?
What do you think?
