The Bestseller

The New York Times has an article today about the vagaries of the book business and the attempt to create bestsellers. Little will be new to readers of this blog, but it's an entertaining article nonetheless, and cleverly crafted--the end is a bit of a zinger.

The article also gives an update on Thirteen Moons, Charles Frazier's follow-on to Cold Mountain. I engaged in a bit of schadenfreude about the fact that Random House had paid $8 million for this novel, and printed 500,000 hardback copies (the New York Times corrects me: the print run was apparently 750,000 hardback copies), and had only sold in the 200-300,000 copy range. Despite the publicity blitz, the book seems to have stalled at 240,000 copies (though the paperback will be out soon). So far, the book has earned out about $1 million of the $8 million advance.

Will Thirteen Moons turn into the largest fiction-publishing debacle in the history of the industry? Quite possibly. Will anything change as a result? Don't count on it.

The US Publishing Industry Shoots Itself in the Foot--Repeatedly (Advances, Part IV)

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The topic of advances has come up on this blog before. Without a doubt, big advances sometimes pay off for the publisher—Special Topics in Calamity Physics, for example, seems to be doing quite well.

But all is not so well in a number of other cases. Holt paid debut novelist Jed Rubenfeld $800,000 for The Interpretation of Murder, gave away 10,000 advance-review copies, conducted a major publicity blitz, and did a first printing of 185,000 copies. The book was published almost six months ago, and, at last report, had moved about 26,000 copies. I calculate that Mr. Rubenfeld’s unearned portion of the $800,000 is roughly $732,400.

Gordon Dahlquist’s much-hyped Glass Books of the Dream Eaters was acquired by Bantam as part of a two-book deal for two million dollars. That’s—let’s say it again— $2,000,000. 120,000 copies were printed; so far, over almost seven months, sales have amounted to about 21,000 copies, which means so far the earned royalties are, say, about $55,000 of that $2 million.

Charles Frazier’s second novel Thirteen Moons (following his bestseller Cold Mountain) leveraged the author an $8 million advance from Random House (in an apparent attempt to live up to their name). Eight million dollars. That’s the highest advance ever paid for a novel. After almost five months of sales, the number of copies sold is 250-300,000, which would be an outstanding sales record had the first printing not run to 500,000 copies. Publisher’s Weekly estimates that to earn out the advance will take sales of a million copies in hardback plus two million copies in paperback.

Not all bad bets are accompanied by trumpeting of the advances paid. Random House (them again?) won’t say what they paid Mark Haddon (of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) for his second novel, but they printed 200,000 hardbacks, and, in six months, have moved about 44,000. In a similar vein, see HarperCollins, who printed up 150,000 copies of Vikram Seth’s Two Lives, and moved about 20,000 in four months (though Book Scan figures claim only around 6,000 have been sold).

I’m not claiming these aren’t good books (as it turns out, I haven’t read a single one of them. I dislike having things shoved at me.) Nor am I claiming the publishers can't break even on one or two of these, via paperbacks or rights sales—though it does look to me as though the five deals quoted above might amount to a collective loss of, oh, maybe six or seven million dollars? Maybe more? (Remember that the investment wasn't just in the advances, but in huge print runs and expensive publicity campaigns.) But these figures do raise some interesting issues.

First, when publishers and agents contend that fiction is a tough business these days, don’t they ever ask themselves precisely why it is so tough? Might it have something to do with the immense risks of spending too much money upfront?

Second, why is there never any blowback for the agent? An author whose overpriced book tanks will have a hard time moving into the front row again, but how is it that editors continue to do business with agents who convince them to pay ridiculous prices for books? I know, I know, it’s an uncertain business—but a broker who convinces clients to buy stocks that crash soon finds that no one will deal with him. What magic spell prevents agents from being blackballed?

Third, for those who believe that publicity sells books and that a big push is what determines bestsellerdom and profits—take a look at the situation described here. The publishing houses were solidly behind every one of these novels, and the public responded with a resounding yawn.

I’m not complaining about people earning money. If Mr. Frazier earns $8 million, that's between him and the Internal Revenue Service. But giving him $8 million in the hopes that his book might make money for the company is not just absurd but unnecessary. He would have written the book for $4 million, or $2 million, or, probably, like most authors do (and like Mr. Frazier did with Cold Mountain) for no guarantees whatsoever.

Here's my theory: The editors calling the shots at the big US publishing houses are all in the pay of the US television industry. TV tried to kill the printed word for decades, with a great deal of success, but there was always a diehard core of readers who refused to be defeated. Finally the TV execs have come up with a plan--if the industry refuses to die, it must be induced to commit suicide.

Paranoid, you say? Perhaps. But it's the only theory I can find that's consistent with the facts.

Jump to Part I, to Part II, or to Part III

More About Money

Writer Jeremy James has responded to my posts on advances over on his blog, and he makes some very good points. I won't attempt to summarize what he says (it's worth reading his whole discussion), but he makes two important points: 1) Writers work from a mix of motives, most of which remain unacknowledged, and 2) Publishers and agents tend to be very clear about their goals. These factors tend to work to the disadvantage of the writer.

I hope I haven't come across in my earlier posts as thinking money is utterly unimportant. Money is nice, and a minumum amount of it is necessary merely to survive, but it certainly isn't the primary motive behind my writing. I can earn a very tidy sum consulting, and spent many years doing so; now I've cut back sharply to allow more time for writing. From any financial point of view, my behavior makes little sense, and I assure you, my pocketbook has felt it.

That doesn't mean I'm an Artist with a capital A, a saint, or a being wholly devoid of ambition. What I try to be is what editor Pat Walsh defines as the ideal author to work with: One with high hopes, but reasonable expectations. When I first signed up with MNW, I mentioned in an e-mail to my editor Will Atkins:

Of course, you'll hear no complaints from me if you take my novel, translate it into fifty languages, sell it to Hollywood, and create lines of action figurines and spin-off sportswear; but you'll also hear no complaints from me should it make it no further than modest sales in the UK. Many fine books sink, and many awful books thrive, and, at least as far as I can see, apart from producing the best book possible, neither author nor publisher seems to have much control over the outcome.

(I'm sure somone out there will want to contest that last line, so I'll leave it there just to provoke that special someone.)

It would be nice to earn a living with one's writing--sure it would. Even nicer would be to earn a good living, though James Michener famously called America a country where a writer could make a fortune, but not a living.

I wouldn't turn down the fortune, either, but I'm not counting on it. As the Russian proverb has it, Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

The position of the writer in the business of publishing is distressingly like the position of the actor in show business. A few earn outrageous sums; most greet each other with, "Hey, Bob! You working?"

I'd never advise someone not to pursue an acting career if it were what they wanted to do with their life. But if someone told me, "I want to be rich, so I've decided to become...an actor!", I'd sling my arm over their shoulder and say, "Bob...we need to talk about this."

Another MNW Writer's Take

Aliya Whiteley, whose novel Three Things About Me came out in July of last year, has written an essay on her experience with MNW. (I confess I haven't read the novel yet--it's still in the mail from the UK, but there's a good amount of favorable buzz about her writing scattered across the web.)

She addresses many of the same issues I've discussed, but does it rather more concisely. Okay, no big surprise there.

Do you do it for the money? Advances, Part III

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(In which the author at last answers the initial question: Why go with MNW rather than hold out for the traditional model?)

This whole issue reminds me of a great Mankoff cartoon from the New Yorker. An author at a cocktail party is saying: "We're still pretty far apart. I'm looking for a six-figure advance and they're refusing to read the manuscript."

It's not as though I were offered a choice between a big advance with a major imprint and the MNW model. As I described before, the big NY houses had already declined the book. It would be more accurate to say that I had the choice of approaching small presses, all offering very limited distribution and very modest advances, or approaching Macmillan New Writing (which pays no advance but gets books into bookstores, gets books reviewed, and knows how to sell subsidiary rights).

I'd held MNW hardback editions in my hands, and seen how much care and cost went into their production; they're a class act. I'd also had time to read the books, and to listen to the buzz about how MNW was handling their releases, and it was clear that MNW had a commitment to the books in their imprint. (To be frank, if the MNW model were offered by a press I'd never heard of, I probably wouldn't have pursued it.)

[Note for Americans: if you don’t travel much outside North America, you might not have heard of Macmillan, but Pan Macmillan is one of the largest and most important publishers of fiction in the English language. Heard of St. Martin’s, Tor, Henry Holt, or Farrar, Straus & Giroux? Those are US imprints of Pan Macmillan. MNW is a new Macmillan imprint, but Macmillan itself has been around since before the Civil War. ]

As an alternative, I suppose I could have refused to publish the book, stuffed it in a drawer, and gone on to write other books and try for a better deal. (Though I've never heard of an unpublished writer choosing not to publish a book because the best offer he got didn’t meet his financial expectations. Does anyone know of any cases?)

And it's possible, of course, that a UK agent (when and if I obtained one) might have placed the book with a UK publisher for a better financial deal. But I thought it equally likely that the sale would go to a minor publisher with a modest advance, lower royalties, and poorer distribution--if indeed it sold at all.

In any case, if this were about money, I wouldn't waste my time writing in the first place. Only a tiny fraction of published writers of fiction earn a living from their writing. (George V. Higgins says you have a better chance of playing pro baseball or being elected to the US Senate, and he's not joking.)

I know an author who made it onto the bestseller list, and still has the same day job. Why do you think so many novelists also teach college? (Hint: it isn't just because they love grading papers.) Peter Carey has won the Booker Prize, won it TWICE, fer Chrissakes...and teaches in the MFA program at Hunter College.

I know this comes as a shock to most people (who seem to think that publishing a novel is a road to fame and fortune), but most first novels, even with major publishers, net the author thousands of dollars. Not hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands—just thousands. Low five-figure, middling four-figure, and even three-figure advances are typical of the first novel. Not all first-time publishees are Marisha Pessl or James Frey. (In fact, it turns out even James Frey wasn't James Frey.)

According to surveys, the median income from books of authors in the US is on the order of $5,000 per year. Maybe things are better in the UK—agent Simon Trewin says writers over there typically pull down something less than 9,000 pounds per year, which is around $17,000 these days.

Given the time it takes to write a publishable book, on an hourly basis you’re far better off flipping burgers. I started writing fiction with my eyes wide open to the financial realities. If I make money, great, I’d love it. But in the same way a composer wants her music to be played by an orchestra rather than remaining notes on a page, I want my book to be out in public. People can't read it in my drawer.

In your comments, you said, "I think I'd rather go the opposite way: agree to no royalties, but demand a much higher advance." I'm not so sure about the wisdom of this, as royalties might expand as your reputation grows (or after you've been arrested for dropping your trousers on the Rush Limbaugh Show, or revealed as Condi Rice's sex toy). Royalties potentially have a very long shelf life.

But even if I agreed completely with your preference and tried to demand a higher advance rather than royalties, I'm not sure anyone in publishing, heartless fiends that they are, is terribly interested in my demands at this point.

But I'll show them all some day! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha…!

(Ow! Don't you hate it when you're briefly possessed by a bad graphic novel?)

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Pay Me First, Big Guy: Advances, Part II

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Huge advances obviously aren’t part of the story of most debut literary novelists—but to many people’s surprise, they also aren’t part of the story of how most blockbuster authors began.

Most people know the story about Stephen King getting the call telling him they’d just sold Carrie for $400,000. Woo-hoo! Overnight success, right? (Well, disregarding the previous three novels he couldn’t publish.)

What people forget is that the call was from King’s editor (not his agent, mind you) to tell him about the paperback rights sale (which Doubleday split 50:50 with him, just the same way that MNW splits subsidiary rights with their clients). But King’s original advance was a whopping $2,500 (that’s about $8,600 in today’s money)—small enough that he kept his high-school teaching job, and he and his wife continued to worry about how to make ends meet. I seriously doubt that Doubleday really pushed Carrie harder because they had $2,500 invested in King’s advance; the $2,500 was more in the nature of a courtesy than a major financial commitment.

After being turned down by dozens of other publishers, John Grisham’s agent sold his first novel (A Time To Kill) to tiny start-up Wynwood Press, reportedly for a $15,000 advance. $15,000? Not bad for a first novel, no matter what the press might have you believe. (By way of comparison, JK Rowling got about $6,000 for the first Harry Potter.) Unfortunately, Wynwood had little distribution, and Grisham eventually bought up copies and sold them from the back of his car to try and get the book to readers. (Hence the legend that he self-published his first book, which is nonsense.)

For Wynwood, $15,000 was a huge investment, so I’m sure they ‘pushed’ with everything they had. Problem is, they didn’t have much with which to push. Do you suppose Grisham would rather have had that $15,000 advance from Wynwood, or, say, a $5,000 advance from Doubleday? (Or even [gasp] a $0 advance from Doubleday?)

(I’m sure someone will say, given the benefit of hindsight, that Grisham should simply have put away A Time To Kill and gone on to get publishers worked up about his bestseller The Firm. The problem with this logic is that Grisham had no real reason to believe The Firm would be a breakout. A scout got hold of a bootleg copy of the manuscript and began hawking it around Hollywood, managed to stir up some heat about a book the scout didn’t even have legal rights to, and suddenly Hollywood wanted it—even before the book had been sold. Grisham himself categorizes this as a very lucky fluke.)

In the 1990s HarperCollins wrote off $270 million in unearned advances and excess inventory. These big advances and extra books weren’t the result of fat payments to deserving unknown literary novelists. They didn’t go to discovering the next King, Grisham, or Rowling, either. They went to established ‘name’ authors who didn’t have the audience appeal the publisher assumed, and to overhyped debut authors who generally dropped from sight after the first overadvertised, overfunded, book hit the stores.

I don’t think this is good for the industry. I don’t think it’s good for most authors—neither for those paid large sums for books that didn’t earn out nor for those whose books were neglected because of the urgency of recouping someone else’s big advance. In the long run I don’t think it’s good for the reading public. Big advances reduce diversity and make for risk-averse publishers.

There is a tendency to speak as though the only stake publishers have in a book is the author’s advance, and that, lacking a big advance, they have no particular reason to try and recoup any money. This may be true of e-publishers, and of presses where Print-On-Demand is the central production technology, and I would indeed steer clear of e-publishers and POD presses that don’t offer a significant advance, because they literally have almost nothing invested in your book.

But publishers who print books with traditional offset technology and try and sell them through traditional channels are sinking quite a bit of money into each book. Doubleday’s real commitment to King’s Carrie was an initial print run of 30,000 copies—not the $2,500 advance.

Jump to Part I, to Part III, or to Part IV

Matt Curran's book already in second printing...(!)

I don't intend to be 'newsy' with this blog, but I happened to pass through Matt Curran's site, and read that his brand-new book The Secret War has already gone into reprint. (It's also had at least one major foreign rights sale already.)

It goes without saying that I'm thrilled for Matt--but tis news also seems germane to the ongoing discussion here, where the question is whether MNW would bother pushing a book given that they aren't out-of-pocket for an advance to the author.

Perhaps The Secret War didn't need much of a push, but I know writers who received significant advances from major presses yet fared far worse in their opening sales and publicity.

Now if Matt will do us all a favor and climb onto a bestseller list or two...

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Advance? Advances, Part I

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The advance for a book should be at least as much as the cost of the lunch at which it was discussed.
--Calvin Trillin

The estimable Jeremy James posted the following in the Comments trail, and I thought it was worth bringing up front:

Hi David. Another great post...

After following the links you referenced about MNW's controversial business model, & reading up on why it's controversial in the first place (no advances, non-negotiable contracts, granting of all rights to publisher, etcetera), I'm curious to see if you'd expand a bit more on your reasons for signing with them.

I've read a little of your writing, and it's pretty clear to me at least,you've talent to spare, and if not SMITE, another book of yours would probably find a home with some U.S. publisher of note.

I guess I'm stuck on the "no advance" concept of their contracts. Others have argued that an author shows more confidence in their work if they're willing to take a low (or no) advance, hoping they'll make it up in royalties. But I remain skeptical of this logic. To me, that's really a show of faith in your publisher's ability to market and promote your book--something which you have very little control over, no matter how much you believe in your work.

I think I'd rather go the opposite way: agree to no royalties, but demand a much higher advance. That just makes more sense to me, because then I'm getting paid for the value-added work I put in (writing and delivering an entertaining story)--not for work I won't be performing (marketing and selling the book after it's printed). Plus it turns an "advance" into an investment by the publisher--one they'll need to get their butts in gear to realize a return on.

Comments?

Hi, Jeremy, thanks for dropping in. You raise some interesting points—interesting enough that I’m afraid it’ll take me more than one post to reply. (In fact, I’m thinking three—and I’d like to also thank you for giving me an excuse to tackle a topic so large, and thereby put off doing honest work.)

Let me start by noting that most of your points would garner widespread agreement. Some people (particularly agents) think it nearly immoral to publish without advances, and the argument that only a large advance will force publishers to market your book is not uncommon.

Prgamatically speaking, you’re right that the main issue with the MNW contract is advances. Except in the case where an agent has somehow caused mass hysteria to descend upon a whole crowd of editors who busily outbid each other for a first novel, I don't think an unpublished novelist typically has much room to negotiate their contract with or without an agent, whether it's in principle negotiable or not. Nor are subsidiary rights typically of much value in the hands of an unpublished novelist. The Indonesian e-book rights probably aren't going to create much of a stir, and as to Hollywood options, I think a well-connected publisher is more likely to sell them than I am (even with the assistance of an agent), leaving me with 50% of something rather than 100% of nothing.

It may help a little to consider the history of the ‘advance’, which, of course, is short for ‘advance against royalties.’ Impecunious writers (and, if I recall, ‘impecunious’ literally means ‘owning no cattle’, which I should think would include most writers) often borrowed money from their agents or publishers to make ends meet. This ‘advance’ was the same idea as an advance on one’s wages—that is, a no-interest loan against future earnings.

With reliable, published writers, books were often ‘sold’ for an advance prior to being written, often based on a synopsis or outline, with perhaps half of the advance up-front, and the rest on delivery or publication. Novelist Lawrence Block writes:

“Some years ago, when I was more prolific than I am now and landed virtually all of my contracts on the basis of an outline or a brief proposal, I could hardly avoid the realization that I was writing a couple hundred words for half the money and then had to write an entire book just to get the other half. It seemed economically sensible to stick to outlines—I could write dozens of them in the course of a year far more easily than I could produce half a dozen actual books. But sooner or later, I found, you have to deliver the actual book…”

The main purpose of the advance was to make sure the writer wouldn’t starve until he or she had finished the book. Advances weren’t generally paid to first-timers: who knew if they’d ever finish a book?

(Macmillan New Writing only publishes writers whose novels have not been previously published, and they only look at manuscripts that are complete. In such cases, the original rationale for the advance is obviously not relevant.)

In time, and with the increasing role of agents in the process, the advance became a standard item in contracts, even for first novels. Advances became the major item of negotiation, and advances swelled to the point where they became news. In fact, today they are a major tool of publicity. The most exciting thing about a book nowadays—to People magazine, at any rate—is apparently the size of the advance paid for it.

Many debut authors receiving large advances (and there are only a tiny number, though they get a lot of print) don't earn out, so they never receive royalties anyway. Big advance + Big losses = Small chance you’ll ever publish again.

In the case of mega-advances, yes, the publisher needs to push the book harder—often to the detriment of other books on their list. That’s great, I guess—unless you’re the guy who got the $10,000 advance, and you’re with the same imprint that gave another author $500,000.

The size of the advances received by debut novelists seems to have little to do with their ultimate success in the business. We'll return to this topic in the next post, but I think it's useful to play agent Simon Trewin's Whatever happened to... game: gather together your friends, get a list of the debut novelists who were given giant advances and massive hype a few years ago, and now see who in the room can remember what the authors published next.

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