Vikram Seth asked to pay back advance after non-delivery

Of course it can happen if an author is in breach of contract, as Mr Seth appears to have done. Good publishers won't ask for an advance back if the book is delivered, published, and fails to sell, though, no matter how often vanity publishers etc. claim that they do.

Well, if you don't deliver the book...



I find nothing wrong with the publisher making a fuss about the manuscript not being delivered on time - and when the author makes an announcement about how lazy he is...

*rolls eyes*

You'd like to think his agent is right now bopping him over the head with a newspaper and demanding he put his butt in chair and get to work.

Sad thing is that there are SO many authors who would love to have a chance like this - and here's a guy pissing it away because he has no self-control.

Hmmm..... I would be very wary of believing this.

Seth's agent said this:

Mr Seth's London-based literary agent, David Godwin, said negotiations were ongoing with Hamish Hamilton, which is owned by Penguin, to establish a new deadline.
'It would be unfair to say the deal has been called off,' he told the Mumbai Mirror in quotes cited by The Times.
'Vikram has been known to take his time with his books. Our aim is to settle a new date. If we can't, then Vikram will decide what he wants to do next.'

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Which the Daily Fail have got third-hand. Seth himself has made no comment and the publisher said:

A spokesman told MailOnline: 'Penguin never comments on individual contract negotiations with our authors.

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So I wouldn't be surprised if the DF has spun this out of thin air.

Given it took Seth ten years to write the first novel and his own admission that he's a slow producer, I'm not surprised he'd miss a mere four year deadline. Especially when, again from his quote, he was starting with a concept "at a very early stage." The concept does sound like one the marketing department generated in a couple minutes: "Vikram Seth, hmmm. Hey! A Suitable Boy, right? How about a sequel? We'll call it A Suitable Girl! Updated to contemporary India!" And not a bad idea, either, if it turns out to be one Seth can sink his teeth into.

I'd imagine the publisher would extend the deadline, though there is the problem of a big hole in its catalog if the book was supposed to appear this year. Of course, if the publisher is hearing that it will be years before they see the book....

Who knows? Just interesting to speculate.

I don't know about this case, but if true, it would hardly be a first. If you don't deliver, you pay back the advance. Every contract I've ever seen has this clause, and certainly all of mine have had it. It's normal, and common.

Seriously, this is not news. You're paid to write a novel. If you don't write it, why should you get to keep the money?

shaldna said:

Contracted four years ago to write a sequel to 1993's A Suitable Boy, book was due last month. Publisher has apparently asked for a return of some of the advance.

So, apparently it can happen, although how accurate the DM is....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...million-advance-taking-long-write-sequel.html

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He didn't fulfill the terms of the contract.

Note the important key words: "...after non-delivery."

When you see stories about commercial presses making authors pay back their advances, when you trace them back to their sources those are the words you keep finding.

Phaeal said:

Given it took Seth ten years to write the first novel and his own admission that he's a slow producer, I'm not surprised he'd miss a mere four year deadline.

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It was also ten times the size of an average novel.

caw

I loved A Suitable Boy. I'm not surprised it sold so well.

blacbird said:

It was also ten times the size of an average novel.

caw

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I think it was longer wrt to word count than Clarissa.

shaldna said:

I'm just surprised it doesn't happen more often.

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Does it not happen often? I've always heard that's what happens; that's why agents will get on your ass about deadlines.

cornflake said:

Does it not happen often? I've always heard that's what happens; that's why agents will get on your ass about deadlines.

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There is something I don’t get here. Why would a publisher make a deal with at a so short deadline from an author who had spend three times as much on the first novel? And the other way around, why would an author accept such a deal? It is not exactly a win-win situation for anynone.

cornflake said:

Does it not happen often? I've always heard that's what happens; that's why agents will get on your ass about deadlines.

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It's actually not that common. There are even cases where a publisher has had an author be years late on a ms.

It does seem to me that especially with very large advances for celebrity books that publishers are increasingly requiring the authors to provide the ms. or return the monies.

I remember being sent to essentially mind an author who was very very late with a ms. and do everything I could do to act as a sort of temp to remove obstacles to completing the ms.

Medievalist said:

There are even cases where a publisher has had an author be years late on a ms.

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Such as, yanno, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?

I remember hearing or watching an interview where JK Rowling said felt so bad about it being so late that she offered to return the advance, nearly giving her editor a heart attack (ahem, figuratively). The editor thought she was pulling out of the deal entirely, when Rowling simply felt guilty for being so late and was offering to return the advance until she cuold complete the manuscript.

I remember when the economy tanked, some literary agents really started getting on their clients' cases to complete books on time. Financially-strapped publishers had started taking missed deadlines as an opportunity to dump midlist authors.

IF it is true they asked for the advance back, it could just be the publisher applying pressure, not really trying to scuttle the deal. I'm sure they want his next book, no matter what, but this tactic makes it uncomfortable for the author to dawdle.

blacbird said:

It was also ten times the size of an average novel.

caw

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In that case, the average novel must be about 140-160 pages long. So let's go with five times the size of an average novel, maybe.

Page count's not the issue, anyhow. Brandon Sanderson could write a 1500 pager in a couple weeks. And what about writers who can do a couple of 300 pagers a year? They'd only need 2.5 years to write 1500 pages. Hell, if you only did one 300 pager a year, you'd have 1500 pages in five years. Plus James Patterson's entire stable, all working on the same book, could probably hand 1500 pages over this time tomorrow.



Anyhow, Seth's other two novels are far from gargantuan at around 300 and 400 pages. Is it in his Girl contract that he has to do another wristbuster?

Phaeal said:

In that case, the average novel must be about 140-160 pages long. So let's go with five times the size of an average novel, maybe.

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Well, I was exaggerating just a little. But, seriously, a four-year deadline to produce a sequel to a best-selling first novel doesn't seem to me to be particularly onerous. Especially if you're paid in advance to produce the work. I can understand the publisher getting a little wedgie about this.

caw

Medievalist said:

I think it was longer wrt to word count than Clarissa.

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I've always heard it cited as just under 600k and a little longer than War and Peace.

I know this is Wikipedia, but according to their list of longest novels Atlas Shrugged is longer and Clarissa quite a bit longer still. According to that list A Suitable Boy is 593,674 words long, as per Amazon.com text stats.

Old Hack said:

I loved A Suitable Boy. .

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I did, too...

Veering wildly off-topic for a while, I read a book called Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow a couple of years ago: it's written in blank verse and was just wonderful. I hope he publishes more.

I loved ASB as well. But I was very glad that the publisher had the sense to publish it in 3 volumes. Cos I couldn't have held it in one.

Old Hack said:

Veering wildly off-topic for a while, I read a book called Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow a couple of years ago: it's written in blank verse and was just wonderful. I hope he publishes more.

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I LOVED THAT BOOK! I knew you were alright!

/derail

blacbird said:

Well, I was exaggerating just a little. But, seriously, a four-year deadline to produce a sequel to a best-selling first novel doesn't seem to me to be particularly onerous. Especially if you're paid in advance to produce the work. I can understand the publisher getting a little wedgie about this.

caw

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Especially if that book is a big, perhaps THE big, literary title on their fall list.

I would have tried to deliver the book in TWO years. Then, having proven my reliability, I would have angled for a big advance on the sequel to the sequel, set in future India, called A Suitable Cyborg.