What is it like?

LOL! You're going to be extremely fortunate if you can get any published authors to tell you their salaries, Billie_Joe00!


What an author makes depends on a number of things. First is genre, or where on the shelf it will be stocked. Next it depends on whether you're published by a small press or large press. A small press is one that only prints a few thousand copies and stocks them in local or regional stores. A large press is one that prints tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies and stocks them in every bookseller to grocery and discount store. Obviously, a large press is going to pay an author more than a small press.

Generally speaking, a publisher will pay as an advance the TOTAL amount that it expects the book to earn for the author anyway. Of course, the author's job is to beat the bet so s/he can collect more money later, known as royalties. Even if you find out what advance an author has been paid, that doesn't mean it's all the author will earn, because -- as the saying goes, "backlist is the gift that gives forever." A "backlist" is an older title that isn't a new release. But as an author gains prominence, and as new readers find new releases, those old titles continue to sell to new readers. So, there's no way of knowing how much an author earns.

But a romance writer named Brenda Hiatt has been keeping a list of the average advances some of the major publishers pay. If you want to look, it's at:

http://www.karenafox.com/money.htm

Just so you know, an "earn-out" is the TOTAL amount the book will ever earn, and unless otherwise stated, the royalty percentage is based on the cover price of the book. Most of these are mass market paperback publishers.

Don't know if that answers your question, but it might be the best you will get!

Cathy

Billie_Joe00 said:

I really really am like such a new person to this whole novel writing thing. I've been wanting to write one for ages, and I have started one, but since coming on this site I have learnt so much about what you have to do.

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Welcome.

I didn't have a clue about the 250 words a page thing, or how you have to provide loads of things when submitting.

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250 words/page is just formatting. Don't even concern yourself with what you need to provide when submitting until you have a finished manuscript.

(The short answer, if you must know, is: a) A manuscript. If you don't have that, nothing else is important. b) A SASE (self-addressed-stamped-envelope) so that you can find out what the agent or publisher says. c) A cover letter. You may also need d) A synopsis.)

It's been really helpful! However i'm really starting to doubt that I could ever possibly write over 50,000 words. It just seems like so much! I don't know if i'm creative enough for that!

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One word at a time, one sentence at a time, one page at a time. It adds up.

But i'm really interested to know what kind of money you can expect when you've had a book published.

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If the publisher isn't offering you a couple of thousand, minimum, you probably aren't interested in talking with them.

I like to write, and the achievement alone will feel amazing, but it would be good to know what kind of money I would be entering into.

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Somewhere between "low" and "insultingly low." Plan on Zero, and anything more will be a happy surprise.

If i'm at all good enough to get published.
Thanks

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All that takes is work.

A writer much smarter than me (Anne LaMott) once said that writing a novel is like driving at night. You can only as far in front of you as your headlight beams, but you can drive the entire journey that way. Writing a novel is like that - as Jim said, one page at a time, one chapter after another. Remember, if you write one page, 250 words a day every day, at the end of a year you have a novel. No it probably won't be ready to send out - but it will be completed!

FWIW, Tobias S. Buckell has "How Much Does a Science Fiction or Fantasy Writer Make?" on his website: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/archives/001423.html. I'm not aware of a similar site for the UK market.

Start with one word, then a sentence, then a paragraph, then a scene, then a chapter...

And if your story isn't a 50,000-word one, make it 1000. Or 2000. Or 5000. Or 10,000. Or 30,000.

You don't have to build the pyramid all at once.

(God knows how many stories I've written -- some okay, some really bad -- before I attempted writing a novel. Too many. Too many.)

maestrowork said:

You don't have to build the pyramid all at once.

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Well said, Brother! Can I get an a-men!

Just write, Billie_Joe. Just write. If it turns into a novel, more power to you. But don't try to see the finish line before you're out of the gate. It'll distract you. Like that little ditty goes about swimming...Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming. And enjoy the process. Keep writing.

Billie_Joe00 said:

I
But i'm really interested to know what kind of money you can expect when you've had a book published. I like to write, and the achievement alone will feel amazing, but it would be good to know what kind of money I would be entering into. If i'm at all good enough to get published.
Thanks

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What kind of money can you expect. Part of it depends on genre, but at a fairly large mainstream publisher, your advance should be from $5,000 to $15,000 for a first novel, though it does sometimes get higher. I've found that mysteries seem to offer a somewhat larger advance than most other genres.

If you're novel sells well, you can earn additional money from royalties. Sometimes a LOT of additional money.

Some writers do get stinking rich. Nora Roberts earned sixty million in 2003, and Dan Brown earned just a bit more than half that. Such writers as Stephen King, John Grisham, and Tom Clancy fall into this stinking rich category, as well. And J. K. Rowling has now earned more than a billion dollars from her novels.

In all honesty, you really can't count on earning a dime. But if you can sell novels to mainstream publishers, you can expect to earn something, and maybe more than you can spend.

As for the 50,000 words, don't sweat it. Each and every time I sit down to write a new novel I have the same thought. After page five or six I always think, "There's no way this thing is going to reach seventy or eighty or a hundred and twenty thousand words. No way at all."

But it always does.

Carlene said:

A writer much smarter than me (Anne LaMott) once said that writing a novel is like driving at night. You can only as far in front of you as your headlight beams, but you can drive the entire journey that way.

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Good advice--but it was E.L. Doctorow.

Billie_Joe00 said:

But i'm really interested to know what kind of money you can expect when you've had a book published. I like to write, and the achievement alone will feel amazing, but it would be good to know what kind of money I would be entering into. If i'm at all good enough to get published.
Thanks

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Billy Joe,
here's a good article about the reality of writing that I found on one of the older threads on this forum. SOme of the other newbies may not have read it yet:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~irvinei/publishing.html

My advice:
write one word at a time, as Uncle Jim says.
Keep your expectations low; write for the satisfation of it, make your work as perfect as you can, and each piece of writing better than the last. But don't expect to be paid for it. That way you avoid disappointment, and if it does brings you money, that's an added bonus. Anything else woudl be madness!

50,000 words may seem like a mountain. But if you nibble away at it say....1000 words a day, you'll have written that inside of 2 months. Or....take it really easy and just do 500 words a day, and it'll take 3-4 months.

I'm easily intimidated by the 100k + figure that I typically aim for. But what I do is plan out my story, assign a guestimate word count per scene/chapter, and then aim for that.

IMPcourAgeVID said:

Just out of juvenile and senile curiosity, what is the deal with advances? As you said, it is the publishers payment of what it 'expects' the author to earn. If the book 'sells more', than of course royalties take care of the added revenue for the author. But, what if the book 'sells less' than expectations? Does it mean that the publisher is left to deal with the loss?

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Yes.

IMPcourAgeVID said:

But, what if the book 'sells less' than expectations? Does it mean that the publisher is left to deal with the loss?

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If the book doesn't earn out, the publisher eats the loss. In practical terms the author was paid at a higher-than-contracted-for royalty rate.

Remember that it's entirely possible for a publisher to make a profit on a book that doesn't earn out.

If the publisher asks for the money back, they aren't a normal commercial publisher and you'll start seeing warning signs against them.

Yes, the publisher loses... that's why smaller presses offer small or no advances at all. And first-time author usually don't get a "huge" advance. Once in a while you hear about some first-timer getting a six-figure advance -- well, the publisher must REALLY believe in the book. Sometimes that gamble doesn't pay off. But don't worry, the publisher makes up for it with other books -- it becomes an accounting game.

What they said! But writing is the first step, and money comes later. You have to believe that you'll beat the odds (which are admittedly steep), but an awful lot of people do. 195,000 new titles were produced last year and it's safe to presume that at least half were new writers. Of the millions producing, it doesn't sound like much, but the harder you work at perfecting a good story, the better likelihood that it will be you.

I agree that a thousand should be your starting point when looking for an advance. More is better, of course!

Good luck!

Another point to bear in mind when considering advances is that if you get awarded an artificially large advance...say because your agent is really good.....but your book sales fail to earn out the advance, you can get a bad reputation. There are 1st timer writers that got whopping advances but had few sales, and that pretty much taints them with regard to trying to place a second novel. So...it might be fantastic to get an unlikely 100k advance....but you better hope the book sales are fantastic.

Here's a question...

Just for curiosity's sake...

Let's say you did just get the regular first-timer advance, a couple or few thousand, and then your book did really really well. Maybe someone wanted to make a movie out of it, or something, and it became a best seller and your name was everywhere.

Would you then make up in royalties what you would have if you'd have gotten the six-figure advance to start with? Or did you kind of miss the boat and hope for a bigger advance on the next one?

pixiejuice said:

Just for curiosity's sake...

Let's say you did just get the regular first-timer advance, a couple or few thousand, and then your book did really really well. Maybe someone wanted to make a movie out of it, or something, and it became a best seller and your name was everywhere.

Would you then make up in royalties what you would have if you'd have gotten the six-figure advance to start with? Or did you kind of miss the boat and hope for a bigger advance on the next one?

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Given the choice between a big (say, mif five-figures and up) advance and not earning out, and a small advance and the book becoming a bestseller, the latter is far preferable. In the first case, the publisher will drop you like a hot cake, you'll ge a bad rep inthe industry, and you'l have to start again from scratch; in the second, they'll be chasing you and your advances will get bigger with every book.
The trouble with small advances, though, is that not much is put into promotion fromthe publisher. If you get a small advance be prepared to work your but off marketing your book yourself - just as if you had self-published. In fact, do that even if you get a large advance.
It's a very, very tough writing world out there and if you want to make a living out of writing, you've got to be very pro-active. Unless you win some big prize at the very start or get put on the Granta list or the critics discover you by some chance (this might happen if you are young, beautiful, female and ethnic, or you get on Oprah, or some big shot puts a quote on the cover of your book) and dance around you even before your book is published.
Fat chance!

Well, that's not quite what I was asking.

Suppose you are a best seller in both situations... is it better to get the big advance up front, or small advance and then royalties... is there any difference at all???

pixiejuice said:

Well, that's not quite what I was asking.

Suppose you are a best seller in both situations... is it better to get the big advance up front, or small advance and then royalties... is there any difference at all???

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Assuming the book earns out its advance and the royalty percentage is the same, you would get the same total amount of money for an advance anywhere between zero and the total royalties the book earns. The only difference is whether it is paid before or after the books sell.

It's definitely a timing thing, pixiejuice. Publishers work advances a couple of ways. Some pay it all up front when the contract is signed. But for a first time author, that's usually only if the advance is small. If it's $10K or above, they'll probably split it into three pieces -- one third on signing, one third on "delivery and acceptance" of the manuscript, and one third upon publication. However, the bigger the advance, the better the publisher believes it will do, which is a good thing.


Let's talk about the advance for a bit, because a lot of writers really don't understand some of the terminology that publishers use. Many people, using perfectly common logic, would assume that "on signing" meant just that. But often that's accompanied by language that says that timelines don't start to run until it's FULLY signed. With a large publisher that can be months later. Our latest contract is dated January 16th, but the final signature doesn't appear until May.

Likewise, "delivery and acceptance" is an often confusing concept. Most would think it's when you first submitted the manuscript to the publisher. Nope. That used to be the case, and CAN be the case for well-established authors whose work the publisher knows is in pretty final form when it's sent in. But for a newbie, "delivery and acceptance" occurs AFTER the editor sends you a letter with the changes to be made (yes, YOU will be making the edits). The editor will then look at what you've done and either suggest more edits, or accept it for publication. THIS is the delivery and acceptance talked about in a contract. This event can occur from three to twelve months after you sign the contract, depending on the extent of the edits required.

Of course, there's a good reason for it from the publisher's standpoint. You have no track record. You might reject every single edit the editor suggests. If that happens, the publisher is allowed to REJECT the book, even after the contract is signed. Or, you might fall ill or die and the book might never get published. Sh*t happens, so the publisher is covering its own tail by ensuring that they don't later have to get the money BACK.

Now, royalties are a whole 'nother ball game. First, you have royalty periods. Those are generally deemed to be from January through the end of June, and from July through the end of December. Some publishers work on an annual basis, and some work on a quarterly basis, but most are semi-annual. When the books are first shipped to bookstores, they are considered "sold" by the publisher. BUT -- and this is a big BUT -- the bookstore is either going to sell the books to the public, or not sell them. If they don't sell them, they will RETURN the books to the publisher (or in the case of mass paperback, they will return just the book covers and destroy the actual book).

Since the publisher doesn't know whether or not the books will get returned until the bookstore tells them so, they will do what they call a "reserve against returns" or "reserve against remainders" which locks up a portion (often a very LARGE portion) of your royalties until a reasonable time after the sales, often up to a year later, before they will actually pay you for the books sold.

So, if you're looking for FAST cash, then go for a big advance.

pixiejuice said:

Well, that's not quite what I was asking.

Suppose you are a best seller in both situations... is it better to get the big advance up front, or small advance and then royalties... is there any difference at all???

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Pixie,
It's always nice and very tempting to take the money up front and run. The trouble is, you just can't tell in advance what is going to happen, how readers are going to behave. That's why I answered the way I did. In the long term, I think it's far better to get a small advance and build yourself from book to book. If I had the choice, and could afford it, ie money was not an issue for me, that's what I'd do. I'm going to look for an article by a British agent which illustrates what I mean; it talks about authors who get huge advances, but after a few years nobody has ever heard of them. You don't want that situation.
The trouble, is most people, when they are offered a huge advance, immediataley see themselves as having already "made it". They just don't realise that that is no guarantee at all; that the book might yet fail on the market - and that is death to you as an author with that publisher, and generally, with that name.
It's true that if you need quick money, then you probably have no alternative than to take the huge advance.
I think the best solution would be if , say you are offered that five or six-figure advance, to make very sure that the marketing budget is appropriately high, and work your *** off to get people to buy the book. There's a lot of talk of word-of-mouth, but in my experience, when a book comes out, nobody's going to buy it if it's on the back shelves. Word of mouth needs a certain momentum to begin with and it's simply not going to happen unless enough peole read the book from the moment of its release. That is very difficult to manipulate, with hundreds of new books coming on the market each month. Why should they pick YOURS?

OK, to answer your question absolutely specifically, I'll tell you of my own experience. My first novel, Of Marriageable Age, got a very big advance but never earned out. That publisher doesn't want to know me.
The French translation of the same novel got a tiny advance, but became a best-seller in that country. In the long run, it has earned me more than the British version, and I could live from those royalties quite comfortably for a few years, as well as from royalties from the second novel, and the French publisher is desperate for a new book from me.
Whereas in Britain I have to start all over again, probably with a new name. Given the choice, I'd take the French version, if I could afford to.
(Of course, it would be even better to get the money up front with a high advance AND become a best-seller, as far as making a living is concerned. But you simply don't know that beforehand, when the offer is being made.)

Usually, if you did get a large advance for your first book, you can also get one for your second and third books: publishers are eager to sign you up for these even BEFORE the first one has gone on the market. But if the first one nose dives then your situation is even worse; whenthe second one comes out they are scared to put marketing money into it, that one nose-dives too, and you can just forget the third one. That means that THREE books have not earned out! They hate you!

So you see, it's necessary that you keep your head screwed on tightly when offers are being made. Don't be seduced by high advances, and don't get euphoric thinking you're the next Stephen King. The very opposite can happen. Be careful. I would try to work out a deal with a publisher if I got such an offer; perhaps arranging with them to take less money myself and for them to put more into the marketing; at the same time letting the word out that did get a large advance, so that the media takes an interest in you.
The trouble is, I simply can't afford that option any more.

Hope your question is answreed better now!

aruna said:

Pixie,
The trouble is, I simply can't afford that option any more.

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Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Do you think that from this point of view is it better to write under a pseudonym from the start?

Pencilone said:

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Do you think that from this point of view is it better to write under a pseudonym from the start?

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Luckily for me, I did write under a pseudonym - on that publisher's recommendation. They thought that my real name was not terribly marketable, and it began with W, which they said is placed near the bottom of bookshelves. Bollocks! Books (at least here in the UK) are simply rowed alphabetically, and it just depends how many books there are of a certain letter. W can be top, middle or bottom.
I am hoping to make a come-back using my real name, which I always wanted to use anyway. This'll be discussed when I find an agent and new publisher.

Some of you may remember the article by Jane Austen Doe, on Uncle Jim;s thread.

Here's a follow on article which is very interesting:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi/2004/03/22/

I'd also like to add that it is personally MUCH more satisfying to be earning decent royalties, than to have that nagging feeling at the back of your mind that you someone put their faith in you big time, and you lost them a lot of money - yes, even if that someone is a cut-throat publisher which doesn't give a damn about you.
I find it best to keep a respectful distance to the whole business; remain confident, but not get carried away by dreams of the big time; hope for the best but expect the worst; to always be a beginner, and humble, and not take the lucky runs for granted. Thinking about the book itself and making it as good as I can, not about the rewards it might (or might not) bring.
Al in all, it's a great experience, failures and all!