The Vanishing Advance

You may have been hearing about this from other publishing professionals or from fellow writers, mes auteurs, but in case you haven't heard, the average advance has declined a bit over the past couple of years. Much of my evidence for this is either proprietary or anecdotal, so hopefully there are a few literary agents or editors in the house to confirm the trend.

In case you're curious, though, there are a few reasons I think lower advances have been—and continue to be—the norm.

Belt-tightening. With forbidding economic indicators such as unemployment still high and talk of a double-dip recession floating around, editors and publishers have become much more frugal in terms of the advances they offer. Many have modified their P&Ls to reflect current sell-through and consumer habits, and decreased demand for physical books has resulted in decreased up-front cash for authors.

Publishing is a business, and we've got to try to make money on as many books as possible in order to stay in business. Speaking of physical media, another reason (à mon avis) for lower advances is:

The shift to electronic media. Because e-books don't face the same kind of supply chain/distribution challenges as physical books and are not returnable, it's easier for publishers to run P&Ls for e-books and to simply offer higher royalties than to stick with the advance model.

True, the vast majority of titles currently acquired are eventually released as concurrent physical and electronic books, but I don't think the day is long off in which a substantial section of the market will comprise e-only titles. Once that occurs, I think the idea of the advance will become even more antiquated; it's much easier to pay an author a fixed percentage of dollars earned in the more or less real-time environment of e-book sales than to bother with advances.

In fact, much (though certainly not all) of the work done by advances is obviated by the fact that:

Advertising and marketing budgets for e-books are often lower than for physical books. While a publishing house—particularly a large one—will pay the advertising and marketing costs for their lead titles, there are many midlist titles and titles published by smaller publishers for which the burden of lining up media and marketing falls squarely on the author. The advance is a way of mitigating this hardship; authors can use the money given to them by publishers to pay to promote their books (e.g. conduct book tours, create book trailers, and so on).

As advertising and marketing have become easier and cheaper—predominantly by way of social networking services like Facebook and Twitter—the cost of promoting books through these channels has necessarily also fallen. If publishers feel they can pay less money for the same commercial success from any given title, they absolutely will. Wouldn't you?

So that, dear readers, is my take on why average advances seem to be declining in this industry. It may be a relatively short-term reaction to the continuing economic uncertainty inherent in the recession, or (as I believe) a long-term reaction to the drastic changes that are occuring in the publishing industry as it transitions from physical to electronic media. Regardless of which, I think it signals an industry-wide recognition of the challenges the business is facing.

What do you think, gentle readers?

This is Why You Always Meet Your Deadlines (Rerun)

Meetings abound this week, mes auteurs, so I'll be posting reruns today and tomorrow. Enjoy!

Episode: "This is Why You Always Meet Your Deadlines"
Originally aired: Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

In case you hadn't heard, Yahoo! sports columnist Adrian Wojnarowski (say that three times fast) has been sued by Penguin Books for failure to meet his deadline regarding a book about former North Carolina State University basketball coach Jim Valvano. The original manuscript delivery date? August 1, 2007.

Wojnarowski was originally offered a cool $400,000 (of which he received $140,000), but his repeated delays caused Penguin to reduce the total advance to $325,000. Now, over three years later, they've canceled the book and are taking Wojnarowski to court to recover the $140,000 they already paid him.

I wish I could say this kind of story was uncommon, but honestly, the only unusual aspect is the filing of a lawsuit. Books are delayed by months (sometimes years) all the time, and failure to meet deadline (sometimes more than once) is not unheard of. I think, however, that publishers' patience is particularly short in the midst of the recession, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were to become even less lenient about missed deadlines, particularly for books bought for six- or seven-figure advances.

The reasons for delays can range from author laziness to the publisher's disapproval of various drafts (that is, sending them back for rewrites) to changes in current events that warrant substantial revisions (generally affecting only nonfiction). Remember, too, that most advances are cut into pieces: often one installment is paid on signing, another on receipt of the manuscript by the publisher, and occasionally a third on or around the date of publication. If you're getting $400,000 and you've already gotten $140,000 just for signing a piece of a paper, one can see how your motivation might be temporarily shot.

That said: this business is slow enough as-is, so as début writers who always want to make the best of impressions, it's in your collective best interest to get your manuscripts and revisions delivered on time. Always be professional, always be on time, and always ask your agent or editor if you have any questions about deadlines, timelines, or any of the other myriad -lines to which you might be subject.

Unfair Use

In case you haven't been on the Interwebz in a few days, mes auteurs, here's the scoop: Gawker published an excerpt of Sarah Palin's forthcoming book, America By Heart, and Mama Grizzly got super mad. She had a judge issue an order for Gawker to take down the leaked pages, and now Palin and Gawker, llc will face off in court on November 30th.

Now, according to Ben Smith of Politico, it does look like Gawker may have been in the wrong: apparently Harper & Row Publishers v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) establishes a precedent for this sort of thing (dealing with the then-unpublished memoir by Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal). It even seems that Palin could use the avenue of discovery to retaliate against the "lamestream media" that has been "criticizing her" for so long.

The thing is, meine Autoren, after having read the four-balance test of fair use under Title 17 of the United States Code, I really don't see why Gawker's use of Palin's words doesn't fall under the protection of fair use. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.) The four-balance test for fair use basically asks these questions:

1. What's the purpose of the use? This seems, to me, to fall under news reporting/criticism, which is protected.

2. What's the nature of the copyrighted work? This is where (I think) you could make the argument that fair use doesn't apply because the work is unpublished—except that 17 U.S.C. § 107 actually says, "The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."

3. How much of the work was reproduced? In this case, a few pages out of a 304-page book. No biggie.

4. Will reproducing this work hurt the market for the book? I can't see how it would; if anything, it will add to Palin's exposure and increase her sales, potentially with an audience who generally finds her insufferable (i.e. most people who read Gawker).

It seems to me that Gawker should be able to print those excerpted pages with or without Palin's permission, and I don't really see why they should lose their case next month. Then again, the precedent of Harper & Row Publishers v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 does sort of complicate things, so I may not have all the facts here.

What do you think, mes amis? (Particularly you lawyers in the audience.)

This is Why You Always Meet Your Deadlines

In case you hadn't heard, Yahoo! sports columnist Adrian Wojnarowski (say that three times fast) has been sued by Penguin Books for failure to meet his deadline regarding a book about former North Carolina State University basketball coach Jim Valvano. The original manuscript delivery date? August 1, 2007.

Wojnarowski was originally offered a cool $400,000 (of which he received $140,000), but his repeated delays caused Penguin to reduce the total advance to $325,000. Now, over three years later, they've canceled the book and are taking Wojnarowski to court to recover the $140,000 they already paid him.

I wish I could say this kind of story was uncommon, but honestly, the only unusual aspect is the filing of a lawsuit. Books are delayed by months (sometimes years) all the time, and failure to meet deadline (sometimes more than once) is not unheard of. I think, however, that publishers' patience is particularly short in the midst of the recession, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were to become even less lenient about missed deadlines, particularly for books bought for six- or seven-figure advances.

The reasons for delays can range from author laziness to the publisher's disapproval of various drafts (that is, sending them back for rewrites) to changes in current events that warrant substantial revisions (generally affecting only nonfiction). Remember, too, that most advances are cut into pieces: often one installment is paid on signing, another on receipt of the manuscript by the publisher, and occasionally a third on or around the date of publication. If you're getting $400,000 and you've already gotten $140,000 just for signing a piece of a paper, one can see how your motivation might be temporarily shot.

That said: this business is slow enough as-is, so as début writers who always want to make the best of impressions, it's in your collective best interest to get your manuscripts and revisions delivered on time. Always be professional, always be on time, and always ask your agent or editor if you have any questions about deadlines, timelines, or any of the other myriad -lines to which you might be subject.

The Blockbuster Phenomenon

Nathan's post from yesterday regarding Jonathan Franzen's Freedom has gotten me thinking about the blockbuster model for book sales in general. Why does the industry invest millions of dollars in a tiny percentage of books that they hope against hope will turn a huge profit? Why do fewer than 1% of books pay for the acquisition of the remaining 99%? Why are the likes of James Patterson, Sarah Palin, and (saints preserve us) The Situation running the show?

Part of the reason is, as I've mentioned before, a sort of singlemindedness endemic to the industry that assumes anything that has worked in the past will continue to do so in the future. If Esteban Fancypants' novel The Art Dealer's Wife becomes a huge hit, he may well end up with a seven-figure offer for his second (or second and third) books. True, it's not entirely fair to blame the industry for this; time and again, consumers have returned to a brand (read: author) they love, and if enough people hear great things about (and later buy) Mr. Fancypants' first book, he's got an established audience for his future titles. Publishers throw money at "sure bets" because publishing has been and always will be something of a gamble, and if there's any indication that leveraging an author with a proven track record can produce more profit, they'll be all over that deal like a monkey on a cupcake.

HOWEVER. Simply because Mr. Fancypants' first novel sold 5 million copies doesn't mean his second and third novels will perform similarly, and for every story of the out-of-the-blue début novelist whose first book sold millions of copies, there's a story of an out-of-the-blue début novelist whose second book tanked. Maybe the second book received bad reviews; maybe it was so different from the first book that it alienated his or her established audience; maybe it comes to light that the author is a terrible person and nobody wants to be caught dead reading his or her book; the number of reasons is potentially infinite. Thing is (and it is fair to blame the industry for this), publishers 1.) perpetuate the blockbuster cycle by driving prices up at auction to patently absurd levels, and 2.) tend to chase losing brands by throwing more money at them long after the authors' audiences have either stopped caring or died.

What, then, can be done about this, mes auteurs?

Well, publishers could consistently include and enforce clauses in contracts stipulating that authors whose books fail to earn out their advances must return the balance of the advance to the publisher, but that's not going to happen unless the industry adopts this policy across the board (not to mention it's not really fair to authors who receive little in the way of marketing and co-op dollars).

I'm interested by this NPR article from last year, which mentions HarperStudio's experimenting with publishing two books a month, neither with an advance of over $100,000, and attracting authors by promising a 50/50 split on the book's profit. While I'm not sure this exact model is a solution, I think programs like it may offer a way out of the boom-and-bust, all-or-nothing blockbuster model that prevails in the industry today.

What say you, gentle readers?

Okay, So You're In It For The Money

Last week I discovered (via the endlessly witty and delightful Rejectionist) John Scalzi's "utterly useless" (read: super useful) advice on writing professionally.

So, yes: caveats.

It is absolutely possible, as John states, to make money (even a lot of money) writing professionally. Also, note that I have never said you can't make money writing (even though it sort of looks like I did, and I should have been more clear). What I should have said was: you're probably not going to make a lot of money writing fiction.

John makes his money writing a variety of articles on everything from entertainment to personal finance, and building such a repertoire—in addition to the requisite (and now probably figurative) Rolodex of contacts and clients—takes a lot of time and effort. John mentions his starting salary as a journalist was very low, and sadly, things haven't changed much in the business since then.

At one time you could make a lot of money writing for television, and to some extent that's still true, but with the preponderance of unscripted "reality" TV shows out there, it looks like there are far fewer well-paying jobs in Hollywood than there were ten or twenty years ago. You could try screenplays, but it's a tough market made tougher by the recession and California's relentless budget crises.

I think your best bets are article writing (à la John), technical writing (writing manuals and... well, technical things), translation (are you fluent in a foreign language?), or copywriting/copyediting (requires a lot of experience and contacts to get good rates). Fiction, memoir, and poetry command lower rates (in descending order), and most people who stick exclusively to creative writing are lucky to make more than a few thousand dollars a year doing it. Also remember that, as a full-time writer, you are self-employed, meaning you're subject to self-employment tax and will have to pay for your own health insurance, retirement planning, &c.

Questions/praise/vitriol? To the comments!

Advance! (Retreat?)

Yesterday (à la Twitter), the topic of advances came up; specifically, how authors and publishers would be affected by a switch to a no-advance model. The question intrigues me, so I think a little exploration is in order.

The advance is, theoretically, payment for services rendered; after all, you've already written the book*, so you're essentially being paid for the legwork you've done so far. Oftentimes the advance will be paid in installments, with the last installment being paid out when the final manuscript is received and deemed ready for publication (or, occasionally, on or shortly after the date of publication).

In my estimation, you're unlikely to get much more than $10,000 for a first novel (though some genres and writers average slightly higher, perhaps $20,000 or even $30,000) and the royalty rate will probably work out to somewhere between $1.00 and $3.00 per book. If we assume a $10,000 advance on a $20.00 book for which, when all's said and done, the house earns a $2.00-per-copy profit, that house will need to move 5,000 units to break even, which is about right for your average début. Many books, however (up to 75% by some estimations) do not move sufficiently well through the register, and therefore do not earn out the advance paid to the author. Good (in the short term) for the author, bad for the house; in the long term, a string of unearned advances can have a negative impact on an author's career and is also pretty bad for the house.

There are many arguments for and against the no-advance model, but I think it's best summed up as follows: publishers will be much more willing to take risks on new authors if they don't need to pay an advance, but since this removes the "we paid for this and we have to make it work" pressure, many a publisher may reduce the amount of time, money, and effort spent on marketing these books. While a no-advance model would likely result in a higher royalty rate for the author, it won't do much good if net sales are damaged by a reduction in in-house support.

This may be an overly pessimistic view of things, so I'm curious to know what you think. What say ye, readeurs and readeuses?


*This isn't necessarily the case for non-fiction, in which case the advance also theoretically covers research costs.