In this scenario, a debut author has sold a completed manuscript for $10,000 (an average opening advance in adult fiction tends to be between $5-15K). Now, the dictionary defintion of advance is: "to supply beforehand; furnish on credit or before goods are delivered or work is done." In olden days, the advance was the money the author lived on while they wrote the book. Of course, in the case of a debut author, the book is written on speculation, but even for previously published authors, only a small portion of the money is now paid when the contract is signed. In the contract, the author and publisher will agree to a payout AKA when the author gets paid different portions of the advance.
Until recently, it was mostly typical to have an advance due half on signing the contract and half on delivery and acceptance. Now many publishers have added a payment due on publication (in really big advances, this can even include advances on hardcover and mass market publication separately). And in a multiple book contract, there can also be advances due on delivery of partial manuscripts. The reason I emphasized "on acceptance" above is that the editor has to read your book and approve any editorial requirements before it's considered delivered. Given the workload of most editors of my acquaintance, this can be a highly variable period. So, let's look at an example, cobbled together from a few debut novels that I sold in the last couple years, and I'll add a timeline so a person can see why planning a budget for writing income and not spending it before it arrives (you'd be surprised how often I hear this one) are essential:
7/17/2007 Offer recd - Advance: $10,000
8/13/2007 Contract recd by agent (usually at least 30 days have elapsed)
8/17/2007 Vetted contract (with points negotiated) sent to author for signature
9/5/2007 Contract recd from author and returned to publisher
10/4/2007 Countersigned contract and payment recd by agent
10/10/2007 Signing payment of $4000 (minus commission) sent to author
11/19/2007 Revised manuscript (which author and editor have been working on since the offer was recd) is approved
1/8/2008 Delivery payment of $4000 recd by agent
1/11/2008 Delivery payment (less commission) sent to author
10/7/2008 Book published
10/21/2008 Publication payment of $2000 recd by agent
10/24/2008 Publication payment (less commission) sent to author
From the time the offer was received to the time the author was paid the full advance, you can see that 15 months have elapsed, and that was with very prompt editorial revisions on the part of both the editor and the author, and really nice turnarounds on the agent's part for payments. Here are some other factors to consider:
Commission - typically 15%, so the payments the author received are $3400, $3400, $1700 (total: $8500)
Taxes - writers are considered self-employed and have to pay quarterly taxes, so that $8500 net earning gets even smaller (but I am not a tax accountant so I'll leave that to someone else).
Costs of Writing - supplies, conventions, time, etc. - some of which is deductible but all of which requires investment
So, what's your net income per month for this grand endeavor? Probably not enough to pay your rent. See Justine Larbalestier's post on First Novel Advances or Tobias Buckell's Author Advance Survey. Do I mean to be discouraging? Heck, no. I pay my rent from this too (and it can take a lot of sales at 15% minus taxes to make the rent). But I believe a writer should have a realistic expectation instead of dreaming of those 6-figure deals (which happen, but not so very often). So often I hear writers (and other creative types) putting forth the idea that dealing with money somehow detracts from their artistic and creative persona. But a girl's gotta
Page Summary
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
stevenagy : (no subject) [+0] - hoosier_red : (no subject) [+0]
- (Anonymous) : (no subject) [+0]
- ryan_field : (no subject) [+0]
- (Anonymous) : timeline [+0]
- dulcimeoww : (no subject) [+17]
- tinhutlady : (no subject) [+0]
- katwrites : On self employment taxes [+3]
- kameron_hurley : (no subject) [+0]
- (Anonymous) : (no subject) [+0]
- (Anonymous) : (no subject) [+0]
- (Anonymous) : (no subject) [+0]
Comments
~Tyhitia
http://obfuscationofreality.blogspot.com/
I'm honestly kinda thrown by how long this all takes. I'd expected about a year's delay from acceptance, but this sounds closer to two. I can understand the reasons why, but I still wonder how well it plays with today's audiences... it's gotta be hard to hold readers in thrall for the two year delay between book one coming out and a second book by the same author finally making it to the shelves. There's this huge amount of data your average readers have to absorb in between, and it's probably rare that an author is good enough people will remember their name for that long if they're not being bombarded with it that whole time. Seems like there'd be a huge loss of momentum for most authors, one that would be extra hard to deal with if the author has an internet-based fan following. How do agents advise their authors to handle that now? Practical, doable advice aside, what would be the ideal magical fairyland of possibilities way to handle it?
Shelley, who looks forward to pretty green-and-white envelopes from DMLA
http://www.allaboutusbooks.net
I mean... the real goal in being a professional writer is to have a lot of book sales, right? Advances are great and awesome and magical, but... they're supposed to be just the beginning of what a book generates for an author (and their publisher). It seems silly to just stop planning at the advance when the real goal is to get beyond it. The readers buying the books and creating the demand are really the be all end all of making that the reality. If there's going to be a year or more between books, I want to know how you make sure your audience remembers you well enough to pick up your next work, especially in the cases where the next work is not part of the same series.
So. I guess I'm really asking, "How do you make sure the readers stay involved and panting for your next book for a whole year (or more)? Great writing only goes so far..."
It's a time advantage— you can sell the second book immediately— and it can even be a sales advantage if they are part of the same series. "We're interested in your book and were wondering if you had any plans for a sequel." "Not only have I plans, I've completed the second and have started on the third."
See, I am not really talking about selling books to publishers, or the time it takes to get them published. That's going to take as long as it takes, and while there are ways to lessen that such as working on the next book immediately, they aren't going to make that time go away. There's a process there and I get that.
But... taking that long is still a disadvantage on the end where you're trying to get real people to go out and put down their cash for your next book. There's still a great big year there in which they can lose interest. Assuming you can't make the publishing time less than a year, which seems quite likely, what can you do DURING that year to keep the public's attention on you (where it should be if you want them primed and ready for your next book release)?
For example... let's say you do something really amazing and write all three books of a trilogy before ever sending them out on submission. Even if they're accepted, and edited, and published as fast as possible, there's still going to be probably a minimum of six months between new books of yours hitting the bookshelves. The real people buying those books could lose interest or forget your name in that time.
So... what do regular authors do, between books coming out, to keep their readers loyal and interested in the next book? What would agents LIKE for their authors to do?
If the book is good enough that the reader wants to read the sequel, they'll remember it six months later. Even a year later. One of my favorite authors only publishes every two or three years, but she's one of my favorites, so I always snap them up.
Six months is nothing. A year isn't too much either. I've been buying books in a series one-a-year for quite a while.
I know there are some readers who will have that loyalty and buying the sequels thing happening from the writing alone... but I think they might be rarer than the ones who need reminding, and given a choice between doing nothing and having the rare repeat buyers only, and doing something and having a lot more repeat buyers who otherwise wouldn't be, I'd pick the doing something for more book sales any day of the week.
My generation especially, for all our fandom, just largely doesn't care anymore about anything that we have the chance to forget about. I just don't know the ideal way to do the actual reminding (though I have theories).
I was reading Grafton's Alphabet books for several years. I bought all the Harry Potters, and when the new Song Of Ice and Fire book comes out, I'll buy that, too.
Most readers are like that.
"The number one reason someone buys a book is because they've read and enjoyed a previous work by the same author."
-- James D. Macdonald
I have concluded that I am asking for apparently a dramatic shift in paradigm when it comes to sales, and that may not be an appropriate thing to do here and now.
So, nevermind. My experience is that sales improve dramatically when more readers anticipate the book's release and go right out to buy it immediately, but I'll be the first to admit that my experience is in a different area and on a different scale, so perhaps is not relevant here.
BUT (And it's a big one.)
You're only thinking of this re: you, as a debut author, with your first novel. That only happens once.
As the years go by, however, and you continue writing and selling books, THEN it no longer matters. Why? Because someone reads one of your books, and likes it. What do they do? They go find out if you've written any more, and they go try those. Say this is five years down the road and you've got three books published. They'll go read all three, and if they liked all three, it is probably now only 3-4 months until your next comes out... and they're now one of your fans and willing to wait. After that, they won't forget you, and they'll breathlessly wait all year long, as long as you keep putting out books they like!
I hope this encourages you a little!
For example, let's assume you're a chef at a restaurant, and you consistently make good food and the restaurant has consistently decent service. Fine. It's an okay, maybe even a good restaurant, and it'll have a steady customer base of locals and some tourists. It's probably about 2/3 full every night, full on holidays and weekends, and definitely not in danger of closing. It's making a decent profit, etc. What then turns it into a TOP restaurant? Marketing. Having a chef and an owner who are driven and go out and find ways of getting butts in seats and a line out the door takes the exact same chef and the exact same service and makes them a heck of a lot more successful. Suddenly it won't be locals and a few tourists stopping in... the restaurant will be an attraction unto itself.
So I was asking how authors might take their "restaurant" from good to top.
Another thing I'm going to use is MySpace. You know how they've got that "favorite authors" field? Well... there's a NYT Extended List author whom my stories are similar to. There are LOTS of readers with myspace pages, with her in their list of favorite authors... and that field is searchable, too! So guess what I'm going to do, once my book is under contract? I'll never mass-spam them all, but I'll take the time to friend them all, and make sure my own page announces when the book will be released! Maybe I'll run a contest to encourage immediate book sales, too.
Honestly, though, I think that quality of writing is 95% of the game. Many people never think to check out their favorite author's websites, but EVERYONE wants to tell someone when they've read a good book... and they usually know which of their friends have similar tastes, and which don't. There's nothing more effective than that. On the other hand, no amount of marketing will make someone recommend a book they didn't particularly like, be it a difference in tastes or quality of writing. So in all honesty, I'm not really sure how much we really CAN do!
-Kathleen MacIver
http://www.KathleenMacIver.com
Some writers who are very prolific have been known to submit under different names to different publishers. Some alternate technical or magazine writing with fiction, or write in different genres. Many write short stories whenever they've got a spare moment. Some of them have a lot of fictional balls all going in the air at the same time, they're working on the proposals and synopses that's eight and nine books ahead of themselves, and filling in ideas and finish work on the next four or five in front, all of it going at once, so they have a steady output always heading out the door. They're planning all the time. Try reading
Scalzi's absolutely right about the lack of financial security.
That's not quite how it works.
Look at the dates above: The revised manuscript is approved on 11/19/07. The book is published 11 months later, on 10/07/08. During that time, the writer works on and hopefully finishes book 2. That book gets turned in on, say 9/15/08 and can be published 11 months later, ten months after book 1.
You don't have to wait for book one to be published to start writing book 2.
The moral of the story: this is why I went to college and became a tax accountant after freelancing full time for a couple of years.
I liked Scalzi saying that you should just basically take that advance amount and cut it in half and figure that's the amount you're actually getting after taxes/agent cut, etc.
"Half" is math I could actually *do.* heh
Travis Erwin