Another Aspect of Waiting

Has anyone found a relationship between the speed of a publisher's acceptance and the amount of the advance offered?

It seems to me the longer a particular publisher holds onto a non-fiction proposal, the lower their offer will be (assuming they eventually make one).

To take it further, I take each rejection from a publisher as meaning I'll get X number of dollars less when I finally get an offer.

Like, if I initially thought my proposal was worth a $50,000 advance, if a publisher has held onto it for three months, I'm now expecting them to offer $10,000. If, after six months, ten publishers have already rejected it, I might be happy to take $5,000 from publisher eleven just to have the chance to get another book on the resume.

Are these just superstitious delusions? Has someone out there still gotten major or even pretty nice bucks after waiting for months at a place and/or being roundly rejected for a year?

Jamesaritchie said:

I can only say wait time has nothing to do with the size of the advance at the publishers I've written for, or read for.

The size of the advance is always based on projected sales, and this is based on what similar books have done in the past, and if the writer of the book has a track record, on what his other books have earned in the past.

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This is encouraging. But how come some proposals sell instantly while others seem to take forever?

I've always felt, the more salable the idea, the quicker the publisher can figure this out, and the quicker and higher the advance. If it takes a publisher months to even decide whether or not to do a book, I can't see how they'd then want to pay very much for it.

Have you ever had a case where a publisher decided immediately they wanted to publish a book, and then made a very low offer? Of, after holding onto something for months, undecided, they finally came around with decent bucks?

Judg said:

popmuze, before they decide how salable your manuscript is, first they have to get to it. And that is more a function of how high their stack is than how good your MS is.

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Just trying to play devil's advocate here, but it would seem to me there'd be a priority of which manuscript gets read before which, especially if one was to sell in two weeks while the other doesn't get looked at for three months. Maybe it's a priority of which agent submits it, or the writer's previous book. In other words, if I'm coming off a best seller, I'm sure I'd go to the top of the stack.