What published authors get as advances

[Brian G Turner]

I noticed there's a Twitter hashtag that authors are using to be open about their book advances - apparently, primarily to show an unbalance, but very illuminating for aspiring writers: https://twitter.com/hashtag/PublishingPaidMe?src=hashtag_click&f=live

The Guardian has already written a piece about this: #Publishingpaidme: authors share advances to expose racial disparities.

The Twitter feed is a bit hard to sift through, but I found a few SFF authors sharing:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1269551956957241349

https://twitter.com/x/status/1269435813114208257

https://twitter.com/x/status/1269561949089660928

https://twitter.com/x/status/1269559440266743810

Bottom line seems to reinforce that low advances are common to start with, but *if* an author can break out then there is potential income, and pressure, to be found. Which includes having future advances downgraded if sales disappoint.

Some might take this as a sign that publishing is indeed an industry where you can make it rich, and your first novel is a Golden Ticket, or simply the first of a string of lottery tickets - but my take is that it takes a lot of effort and hard work to start building up to big figures, and that the people who do are very, very much in the minority.

 

[sule]

I would agree. Reading this thread it seems the "breakout" authors are the ones who consistently put out good work and build their audience over time. The gradual increase of advances, even for "successful" authors shows that the publishing industry is very wary of writing big advance checks unless they know how to market the book (or author) and are convinced they can get a good return on investment. Almost none of these authors got a six figure advance until they were basically a household name, and most authors started out with an advance around 10k per book. I've heard published authors talk about the fear of a "bubble" in traditional publishing (which has been around for a while) that paper publishing is one bad year away from being extinct, and that might have something to do with the stinginess of these advances. Or it could just be that the big publishers feel that new authors are a dime a dozen and that if this one doesn't work out they can go back to the well for another handful.

 

[Triceratops]

My super days for advances and sell-throughs were from 1987 to 1991. Of course, those were non-fiction books. Thirty years and three agents later, I never captured that lightning in a bottle for any of my novels. I've had so many small press and indie contracts that I, and current agent, have rejected about 25 of them due to low or no advances and/or refusal to negotiate the contract. In those days, small and independent/medium presses paid nice advances and had excellent distribution and promotion departments.

 

[Astro Pen]

An advance is just what it says, an advance against royalties. Not a "wage". Think of it as a cash flow thing, part of a total picture. Just make sure the whole contract is good for the eventuality that sales go through the roof.
I remember from the music industry that an artist who had a successful record had signed an appalling contract where he got an advance but only 1 cent per record thereafter. Fortunately this was eventually challenged in court, deemed "an unconscionable bargain" and adjusted. But it is better to get it right in the first place