Advances, again
July 18th, 2009
On my old, dead blog I wrote a post on author advances. As I remember, I argued that it didn’t make sense to pay advances to new novelists. The books are already written, so it’s not like the advance covers writing and research expenses. And if the novel doesn’t earn back its advance, the publisher loses money (bad for everyone) and the author looks like a lousy investment (bad for the author). Better to ax advances in favor of higher royalties, which tie to actual market performance.
I was thinking mostly of fledgling artists, who don’t have a track record (i.e. there’s no way to guess how much their books will make). When I skimmed some numbers it seemed like the argument didn’t bear much on that group. The advances for most newbies are already tiny relative to other costs (printing, warehousing, labor, promotion). The make-or-break advances go to celebrity memoirs, pros, non-fiction, and the occasional “hot new author.”
Now I’m hearing more and more about imprints doing the above–cutting advances in favor of higher royalties. See Kassi Kroszer, for example, and her link to Mike Shatzkin.
From Shatzkin:
The two most innovative imprint initiatives in recent memory — Bob Miller’s HarperStudio inside HarperCollins and Roger Cooper’s Vanguard inside Perseus — are built on the idea of reducing risk, paying the author a lower advance. Yes, they also promise a higher reward (higher royalty), but experienced agents know most books don’t earn anything beyond the advance.
I know it’s naive, not to mention insensitive to the apocalyptic travails of artists everywhere, but I still think advances for novels are a strange idea. Clearly they have an important role in the publishing industry, if chiefly as a meter of professional hype; they seem important to agents’ business model and to authors self-esteem. But if you’re aiming to sell books, shouldn’t you make money off, you know, actual sales? As opposed to someone’s expectation of sales?
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2 Comments
1. Keyan | July 23rd, 2009 at 9:07 am
I’m not sure about this, partly because it’s quite difficult to know how royalties work. It’s not unusual to find authors angsting about what their sales were and whether they actually got the royalties they were due. In that model, all the control is in the hands of the publisher – and the author has no way of vetting anything. With an advance, at least the author knows they’ve got that sum, and the royalties, if they come extra.
2. nickwolv | July 23rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Yeah, I’ve heard that, too. Also about royalties being paid super, super late. And what happens if the publisher goes out of business? I don’t know, but it seems like that could cause problems.
One irony that comes to mind is that the “no-advance” publishers and imprints would seem categorically to be on shakier ground–which suggests there might be problems with royalties down the road. Whereas the sort of big, solid publisher capable of offering big advances might also be a more reliable source of royalties. But maybe that’s not the case.
One thing that impresses me, with my fringe view of the publishing industry, is that there’s never an obvious path. Some writers get an agent first, some get an offer first; some come up through the workshops, some submit anonymously; some make a name in short stories and move to novels, some start with novels right off the bat. It’s all very messy. Surely the same is true when you get in deeper. Fat advances must have some uses, or publishers wouldn’t offer them.
Still, I’d feel sort of weird if I didn’t earn back an advance. I suppose you never can tell–a book can seem like a failure, and then the author writes a hit and the old titles start selling.
One thing’s for sure–I don’t have to worry about ANY of these questions, just yet!