What's a Typical Book Advance?

SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!

OH HI. See that up there? Maybe you’d like to subscribe to Agents and Books. For $5/mo or $50/year you’ll get advanced agently and bookly information on Thursday. Like this week, we’re going to talk about why, or why not, you should go ahead and write book 2.

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Hi friends!

Because I love Twitter and love it doing work for me, I ran a poll yesterday to see what burning questions you had, among the options I included:

Should I have been surprised it was the one about money? I almost didn’t include it, because I knew that what I had to say about it was there is no typical advance. I think I clickbaited myself. But a Twitter poll is a promise, so we’ll talk about money and expectations today.

When my clients ask how much we might get for their book, before we send it out to editors, I give a very annoying answer. I say something like “between $5,000 and $50,000.” This is true, but it’s not what my clients are asking. They want to know what I think we’ll get. They want to hear that I think we’re definitely going to get six figures in a 5-way auction. Believe me, I want this to be true, too! Or they want me to manage their expectations because it’s very stressful to send your book out into the world. I want to be able to tell my clients that I’m going to walk into every editors’… inbox and demand all the cash they have for this amazing book.

But this isn’t a stick-up, it’s a offering. I send out books; editors tell me what the market will bear. I don’t have to agree with them. We’re not required to accept an offer that doesn’t work for any number of reasons and my clients and I have turned down many offers. It happens.

After almost 14 years as an agent, I have a decent gut instinct for what a book I send out will get. I don’t often tell my clients this, because I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to overestimate and disappoint them. I may narrow my range and say, maybe, “from $7,000 to $25,000.” But that’s still a big number. It is what it is.

Advances are lower than you think they will be. I know, it sucks. The big deals you hear about, the million dollars for the sorta maybe plagiarized thriller, are outliers. You hear about them because they are big, sexy stories. You don’t hear Debut Author Receives $35,000 Advance and Everyone is Thrilled. That happens way, way more often.

Everyone wants the most dollars. I mean, we should all be paid for our work. How do we get the most dollars, then? Do you have the fanciest, (what I call big dick) agent who walks in and demands a million dollars? You could, if you wanted, maybe. Do you only send to the biggest editors at the most prestigious houses, even if that means that’s just like 6 people? That’s one way to go. I don’t particularly do those things, because it doesn’t serve anyone in the long run. I, and my clients, want to work with editors again and again, and walking in only focused on cash doesn’t always start a relationship off on the right foot. Or even result in the best deal, overall.

BUT KATE YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO TELL US WHAT A TYPICAL ADVANCE IS WHY ARE YOU STALLINGGGGGGGGGG?????????

Ok, ok. A typical advance varies from genre to genre, from author to author. It is not a level playing field. All debut mysteries do not get $12,500 for the first book and $17,500 for each one after. Advances are also not commensurate with how long it takes to write a book or how expensive it is for the author to produce. I’ve had to reject offers because my client wouldn’t break even after all factors in the production of the book (materials, photography, time) were considered. That’s not fun at all. I’ve had six-figure offers for books that had less than 1,000 words. I’ve had four-figure offers for books the author had rewritten four times before we sold it. Nothing is fair about book advances. It’s not about fair. It’s about a publisher’s return on their investment.

Publisher’s ask themselves when figuring out an advance: how many copies of this do we think we'll sell? How much can we offer and still make money on it down the road? How much will it cost to make this book? How many copies did similar books sell? What is the lowest number we can give the agent and author without them laughing and saying no right away? What is a reasonable number we can give in case there is a lot of interest in this and there’s an auction and our budget has a limit? And sometimes, but not as often: how much money can we throw at this so that the agent and author say yes right away and don’t let anyone else bid on it?

You’ll notice that what does the author deserve for writing this book? The publisher is not in the business of deserve. They are in the business of selling books. Publishers want their authors to be happy and compensated, but that is one of many other considerations.

I can’t tell you what your advance is going to be because I don’t know your book. It will probably be less than your daydreams about it and I can almost guarantee it will not be enough to quit your job. Exactly one person in my 14 year career has been able to do that with their first book, and it wasn’t because they got a million dollars. Book deals are about money, but they are also about editorial fit and royalties and format and publication season and delivery schedule and territory and subsidiary rights. You’ll know (because you’ll talk to your agent about it) what, besides advance, is most important about your potential book deal.

Ok, ok, ok, ok, fine. The typical book deal is $17,345.37.* Does that make you feel better or worse?

(*Lol no of course I’m kidding. Did you even read this?)

If I haven’t crushed all your dreams and annoyed you with a clickbait headline, I’ll see you next week! Or on Thursday for subscribers! Send me your questions for Q&A Thursday, my subscriber-friends.

Best,

Kate