I also wonder if there are writers out there who would simply balk at a 10k advance and decide to wait to be published rather than accept that amount.
For a first time, unproven author in many genre markets (including SF/F), $10-15k is an average advance for a book.
Numbers are hard to find, because it's generally considered rude to talk about money in the first place, but small advances are not uncommon. And I really don't understand how Small Advance automatically equals No Support.
I have no expectations of TV commercials, one-page print ads, or giant spreads in the lit mags advertising my release. But no respectable house is going to invest in an author and then do nothing to get their name out there. Not all best-sellers are overnight sensations. Many of them started out as nobodies with small advances.
Scott Westerfield, who is a bestselling YA author, received $4000 for his first book. In advance. He obviously made a lot more in royalties after he earned out.
I don't know if being unable to find books locally says as much about the publisher as it does about the bookstore. All books are listed in the same publisher catalogues. Sure, maybe a book with a $100k price tag will get a little more verbal push from the marketing staff, but doesn't mean they simply won't pitch the $20k book at all.
But this is all really a bit of a sidetrack from the original post. Lowering midlist advances doesn't mean that the money they might have gotten will go toward marketing the more expensive books--those proven $100k authors already have a marketing budget. More likely, it means publishers aren't spending because
they don't have it. They won't risk it not earning out.
I'll play with my contract for a second. My royalties are 8% cover price on mass market paperbacks. The average MMP is $7.99, so that means I earn $.64 for each book is sold at cover price.
A $10k advance means I only have to sell 15,625 copies to earn out. An advance of $100k means I have to sell 1.25 million copies (ETA: Miscalculation: 157k copies) to earn out my advance. Heck, even a $50k advance means selling 78,000 copies, which is still a huge number for mass market.
Now, my own advance was neither 10k nor 100k, but it's a number I think (and apparently my publisher also thinks) has a decent chance of selling out. It's nice to dream about getting that $100k contract, but if you don't earn out (and I've seen some highly-advertised, huge-advance books that utterly fail in the marketplace), you'll be hard-pressed to get another contract.
