A Brief History of Seven-Figure Book Advances | Literary Hub

For the purposes of this list, I'm limiting the field to literary fiction sold over the last ten years-mostly because it's the genre with the fewest, and therefore most notable, big-money deals (other than poetry, I suppose). Yes, the Obamas sold their books for "well into eight figures," but it's hard to compare a deal like that to one for a highbrow novel or a story collection. I'm also limited to information that is publicly available-or at least available on Publishers Marketplace-so I'll make no claims that this is anything close to a complete list. Lots of deals are not reported in the public sphere, and for instance, while I've heard certain rumors, and while I'd wager that Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Safran Foer, Rachel Kushner and other big-name authors have gotten sizeable advances for recent books, I haven't found any specific intel to that effect, and so I can't swear to it.