Advances

Everyone wants to write a book, or to say they have written a book. Publishing a book is still an honor, a point of pride-but like pretty much everything else, it's also dependent upon a capitalist business model. And the financial side of publishing can be opaque, unfair, and downright contradictory.  Read more

For better or worse, writers and readers live in an age of the million-dollar book deal. The Big Five publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster) increasingly gamble on massive book advances in hopes that they might put out one of the biggest hits of the year.  Read more

"If a work is to be PoD/ultra short-run and/or ebook only, and the author is being paid only a minimal, or no, advance, in my view the comparison is not only with how those terms compare with a traditional contract, but also how they compare with the fact that an author can self-publish in such forms, at almost zero cost, perfectly well.  Read more

The median advance for traditionally published authors is "well under £6,600", according to early findings of a survey into authors' attitudes towards their publisher. The survey also found that bigger publishers pay more.  Read more

The reality of a six figure advance is highlighted this week by the failure of Harper Collins to realise its investment in Kindle best-selling sensations Mark Edwards and Louise Voss. A lot of noise was made in 2011 as the Harper Collins joined in a desperate scrap to secure the writing talents of the duo.  Read more