Median author advance under £6,600 | The Bookseller

The survey found that taking advances paid only by the large trade publishers (from Penguin Random House to Bloomsbury) the median advance climbs to about £13,000. The survey asks authors a range of questions, from the level of advance they most recently received to how satisfied they were with their cover design. Of the authors who have so far completed the survey, one-third were published by a "big five" publisher, and a further fifth published by a "large trade publisher". The majority of writers had published six or more titles already, with about half the respondents indicating that they had self-published at least one title, while a further 23% reported that they had "seriously considered" self-publishing.