Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/, the U.S. trade magazine, recently ran an article confirming that the number of seven-figure advances for novels is actually on the rise. It lists several recent acquisitions by big American publishing houses, mostly for debut novels, that involved payouts of more than $1-million. That's right - debut novels.
You might be wondering if you read that right, given what else you have heard recently about the demise of book publishing and the alleged poverty of respected authors. You likely have read that a famous writer was contemplating working in coal mines to make ends meet, and that, in this country at least, several foreign-owned publishing companies have been flailing about in a kind of budgetary panic, having fired, laid off or rearranged senior staff. This after a decade of decline in the book-selling business, with bookstore chains in decline and a near-universal sense that Amazon is the Eye of Sauron. It looks, from the inside, like turmoil.
So what on earth is going on? Are the publishers actually rich?
