#HowToAuthor: Book Deals & Marketing

Let's talk about money

There are many wild misconceptions about how money works in publishing and how when you get a book deal you become rich and can quit your job. A little transparency goes a LONG way.

Several years ago I read Jennifer Laughran's breakdown of a 100K 3-book deal and it completely realigned all my expectations. That reality check was invaluable for me in terms of how I approached the business and future planning. Wattpad doesn't like links, but you can Google "Jennifer Laughran 100K book deal" and it'll pop right up.

Let's get the worst of it out of the way: The average publishing advance for a book deal is 1K-10K. That's it.

And that's BEFORE your agent's 15% and taxes. Book deal money is taxed between 35-40% in the U.S., on the high end (for my own sake, I hope that estimate is high). The government doesn't care for artists, apparently.

So on the low end, you are looking at a 4-figure to low 5-figure advance.  It's "take a modest vacation" or "buy a new couch" money. Nice to have, nothing to live off.

My area of expertise is YA, so for the rest of this post, I am specifically going to talk about deals and money based on real things I know from this part of the industry. I'm going to throw out figures and facts, none attached to real people, but trust me that every thing I write here is based on a real person and real money.

Six-figure deals are not that common in YA. The reason it seems like all authors get 6-figure deals is that those are the amazing stories that we hear about all the time. Outliers make the news, for obvious reasons. No one is screaming from the rafters about their 12K advance. (That's a real advance number received by a real person I know, from a major publisher)

According to an industry insider I spoke with recently, right now, many publishers are offering out the gate at around 15K-20K per book--a sweet spot offer for a book they think has value but don't want to take a lot of risk on. 35K per book is above average. 50K per book is great. After this, you head into "unicorn territory." (for a debut, especially)

Advances are going to vary by genre. You see the biggest advances for sci-fi/fantasy series, with some notable exceptions for high concept contemporary. (And already successful/famous authors of course get big advances. Primarily I'm thinking about debuts). Generally I've seen contemporary and niche speculative works garner the lowest advances--but if those books break out, they're more likely to earn royalties (it's a trade off).

Some publishing houses have more money to offer for advances than others and/or different policies when it comes to advances. I know one imprint at a Big Five publisher that typically offers very large advances, and another that typically offers comparatively low advances. They're both major publishers that publish great books, but the difference in money is huge. Smaller publishers are less likely to have large amounts of money to throw at an author. But the house that can pay you the most money isn't always the best choice (more on that later).

A lot of 6-figure deals you hear about are a) for multiple books and b) are VERY low six figures. 50K per book--100K for a duology, 150K for a trilogy--is a "6-figure deal"--and it's a very good and respectable deal number. But when you do that math, it's not as much money as you think it is. To crib from Jennifer Laughran's breakdown, all told, after agent fees and taxes, a 100K deal boils down to 52K-60K (depending on tax rate). That is a nice chunk of change... but it's spread out over 2, 3, 4 YEARS.

So a 100K book deal is GREAT and AMAZING and you should be very very happy and pleased... but it's nowhere near average. I advise authors warm themselves up to the idea of a modest and respectable 5-figure deal, and otherwise be pleasantly surprised if they can get more.

Now about those unicorns: if you hear about a deal that is anywhere north of 150K, be happy for that author but then disavow yourself of the notion that that will be you.

Books that get massive book deals do so because it's the right book for the right time. Because multiple houses want it (auction). Because the author has a powerhouse agent who can command that type of money. Because the editor who wants to buy has clout and can get large budgets approved. Because the P&L (profit and loss statement) spoke in that book's favor (right time & place factors in here a lot).

The downside to a massive book deal: you have further to fall.

Most books don't earn out their advance, which means most authors, regardless of the size of their deal, will never earn royalties on that book. Taking a smaller advance doesn't guarantee you will earn out, but it does make it more likely. A publisher taking a smaller risk on your book also means that even modest sales will work to your favor (or at least to your neutral), make it more likely the publisher will take the risk of buying another book from you.

Books that get massive book deals can fail. It happens more than you'd like to know, and when a massive book deal fails... the odds of that author selling another book drops dramatically. Any of us who have been around long enough can name "mid-six figure" (or more!) book deals that got huge buzz, debuted to little fanfare, and then that author has not had a book deal since.

That said, given the odds of earning out are low and you want to be paid for your work, many authors advise taking the big advance and running with it. I think there's a happy medium. Hope for a medium advance, decent sales, and a publishing future.