Earning out advances.

When you're mentioning small and e-presses in queries, it's less about earning out the advance than it is about copies sold. Telling a prospective agent your e-book sold 5000 copies its first week is more likely to strike their gong than saying you earned out a $200 advance its first day (obviously I'm making up numbers here).

I don't see the harm in mentioning it, but I don't know that it will make a difference with many agents. It's all about the story you're selling them in your query.

The day it was released huh? They have a word for that, I can't think of it right now.

Oh, yeah. Winner.

ChaosTitan said:

When you're mentioning small and e-presses in queries, it's less about earning out the advance than it is about copies sold. Telling a prospective agent your e-book sold 5000 copies its first week is more likely to strike their gong than saying you earned out a $200 advance its first day (obviously I'm making up numbers here).

I don't see the harm in mentioning it, but I don't know that it will make a difference with many agents. It's all about the story you're selling them in your query.

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What she said. If you're moving big numbers on release day, it might make someone sit up. If it's under $500 for the advance, I say hold off until you get your first statement. If your first month's sales are really impressive (four figures or more) then I would toot my own horn a little. But only tentatively, to see how the agents respond.

There are some agents that are extremely savvy to the ebook romance market (Bradford is one of them) and then there are a few dinosaurs that still think it is one step away from Publish America. So tread carefully and always consider who you are querying, too.

I'm another vote for "wait 'til you get the first royalties statement and then decide".

And remember that most editors and agents will check your name in Nielsen Bookscan and make sure that your sales figures are as good as you say they are... in this case I'd probably refer to the earn-out thing, but only in passing; and only if the sales figures attached to that are pretty good. After all, if the advance was only a fiver and the book sold twenty copies it would have earned out.

(Not that I'm suggesting that's what's happened with your titles, but it has to be considered.)

I think it all depends on the numbers. Average book sells under 500 copies, so if fall into that ballpark, it's not likely to impress an agent. But if your numbers are high, that shows potential. (and an audience who;d buy your next book). Mention it if you'd like, but use hard numbers so they know what you're talking about. "Earned out its advance" means nothing without knowing what the numbers are.

Just stick to the number of copies sold, but only if the number is likely to grab the attention of the agent/publisher.

CaoPaux said:

What do you mean by "average book"? I.e., the average for commercial fiction is exponentially more than 500.

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Went looking for it It was from a few years ago, so maybe it doesn't hold true anymore, but I don't think things change in the industry that fast.

• Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast.

“Here’s the reality of the book industry: in 2004, 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies” (Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2006).


I also found a good post from Editorial Ass about sales for a debut literary novel, which paint a better picture, but still not huge numbers. Highlights: 7000 sold, you're a star. 1500, publisher is disappointed, but cheers you up.

That average sounds like it's including all those self- and vanity-published books that only sell 100 copies.

Hmm, so those are literary numbers (from Editorial Ass).

My tie-in novel sold between 15-18000K. Might have sold more but the publisher didn't want to go back for a second printing until we had another 5K in reorders (only had 4100 according to my editor at the time I spoke to him).

That didn't quite earn back my advance, but hey, the advance check didn't bounce, so I'm a happy puppy.

... 1.2 million (legitimate) books published in a year sounds about right if that includes ones from all over the world. The number of books published in just the US or the UK is nowhere near that. // Rather depressing sales stats for books :-(

My agent and editor echo this...and yeah...6 weeks is the average life of a book in a book store so kinda hard to get more sales if it's not in the stores.

CaoPaux said:

Uh huh. That's average sales FOR THAT YEAR, not the for the life of the book.

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I didn't even think about that. I went out and found an example: a hardcover of Stephen King's Carrie. The Amazon ranking is in the mid-50,000, which means sales of, what, a handful a day? If that were, say, five, that would mean the book has sold about 1800 copies this year. From what I've found, it's actually less than five a day. But I think we can safely say Carrie has sold more than that in total.

CaoPaux said:

Uh huh. That's average sales FOR THAT YEAR, not the for the life of the book. ....

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Not every book has a long life. Some books gets the one printing, the books goes out, and if the stores send them back after a few months and don't ask for any more it's a done book. If all you sell are 300 copies, even if 15K were printed, the rest get pulped if no bookstore will take them.

Think about it. If all those books published every year stayed on the shelves from year to year, there'd be no room for anything at the bookstore. So the good sellers stay, but the low sellers get their shot and then vanish. New ones show up the following year to take their shot.

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer it if these numbers were grossly off kilter, but from everything I've read, the majority of books out there don't do all that well. I think it's probably easier for the author if they remember that they're probably not going to sell 50K books, and if they sell 10 or 15K they're doing really well. If the expectations are more realistic, then authors aren't as disappointed and angered when things don't turn out to be mega bestsellers or sell tens of thousands of copies and get them rich. Because that's not the likely outcome for most books, even though I wish it was.

As authors, I just think it's better to be realistic about our books. Hope for the best, but be ready for the worst. If we go in expecting to sell 50K and only sell 35K, we're disappointed instead of being thrilled we sold so many. It's all about expectations.

Danthia,
If what you're saying is true, that you're a rollicking success if you sell 15,000 copies...The trouble, for first novels at least, is even more elemental than that. My suspence novel has been out on submission for over a year now and had a few close calls: "We love it, great characters, plot, voice, blah, blah, but" And the but in every case has been that they "need" a 25,000 copy first printing, so sorry. All the major publishers seem to think that if they can't print 25,000 it's not worth going forward. Depressing is the word for this trend.

DeadlyAccurate said:

I didn't even think about that. I went out and found an example: a hardcover of Stephen King's Carrie. The Amazon ranking is in the mid-50,000, which means sales of, what, a handful a day? If that were, say, five, that would mean the book has sold about 1800 copies this year. From what I've found, it's actually less than five a day. But I think we can safely say Carrie has sold more than that in total.

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Nothing is as meaningless as an Amazon ranking. There really is no system that accurately tracks book sales, other than how many receipts are turned it by year's end. Not even Nielsen records more than a fraction of sales. Amazon is even worse. A book might sell ten tousand copies per day, and both Amazon and Nielsen can still say it's only selling four copies.