I imagine I'm going to get a lot of, " How long is a piece of string" styled answers, and I know that the amount J.K made on the first Harry Potter book will be significantly more than what most will get, but I'm looking for a rough estimate.
Thinking about it, knowing the whole process would be interesting, an average MG book, gets accepted by a publisher, do you get paid an advance then? Or is it at a later stage? And what sort of percentage would you make on each book?
Again, I know all these things will be estimates, but I have absolutely no idea, so any educated guesses will be helpful
Thanks!
Basically, how long is a piece of string is the answer, but I will try to be helpful.
Advances are usually paid in three tranches. The first third, you get on signature of the contract. The second comes on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript. The third comes on publication (which may be one, two years after you signed, remember.) You won't see any more money until the book has earned the advance back in royalties.
I've always been taught that the level of advance has a rough and ready relationship to the amount the publisher expects the book to earn in royalties across its first year or so: the first print run, basically.
Let's say I, the publisher, have worked out that we make a modest profit if we print and sell 7,000 copies of your MG book at a RRP of £5.99. Let's assume the books are sold to the retailers at an average 60% discount: I'm taking in about £2.40 per book, or £16,772. Assume you're being paid 7.5% of price received. Your share of those sales would therefore be £1257, which gives me a sense of the level of advance to offer you.
That seems really low, but 7.5% PR is a minimum really. You may be on a PP (Price Paid) deal, where you're getting 7.5% of the cover price, not what the retailer paid, though that's increasingly uncommon in UK children's books (you're likely to see contracts that offer PP royalties on hardbacks and PR royalties on paperbacks, without a hardback being scheduled.) Or you might be on a higher percentage - 10%, say. It's also possible to be on a lower percentage - with a picture book, say, you'd be splitting that 10% with an illustrator.
You might not even be on a royalty deal. If you're writing work-for-hire series stuff for example, you get paid a flat fee and nothing on the back end.
Now: most advances that I see are actually higher than the rule of thumb above might suggest. When I run a profit and loss analysis of a prospective book, I am, as I say, looking mainly at the first print run. That's where most of the up-front costs will be; if I can make a profit there, then the book will have paid for itself. If I look at it and we're in the red, I may apply a bit of optimism and tack a reprint on to the costing, which usually makes things look a bit better. But as far as the advance goes, I'm kind of expecting that to earn out at some point beyond the scope of the P&L; so as long as the actual cost of paying it is covered it's OK to pay more than the royalties would indicate.
SO: the level of advance is dictated mainly by the number of books the publisher expects to sell. If you look at sales figures for books comparable to your own (read: not Harry Potter) you can work out roughly where you might be at.
