A Writer's Tale

Say your book sold so many copies that you earn $80,000 over your advance. The publisher has to send you $80,000! You’re in the chips! Your ship has come in!

Now, at last, you can quit your job!

Well, maybe not.

There are things called “accounting periods” and “monies being held back against future returns.”

The first accounting period generally ends about six months after a book’s publication date. About two months after the end of the accounting period, your agent should be sent a royalty check. That is at least eight months after the book was published but frequently longer.

But will you get $80,000? You wish.

You’ll get more like $34,000.

$40,000 minus $6,000 for your agent ($4,000 if you’re lucky enough to have an agent that only takes 10%).

The missing $40,000 of the $80,000 you think you’re owed is being “held against returns.”

In truth, it is being held so that the publisher can keep it longer. They use your money for other purposes, such as paying salaries, printing costs, advances to other authors, whatever.

Unless maybe they’re just going for the interest on it.

Okay, so you ended up with $36,000 instead of $80,000.

No big deal, right? You’ll get the rest next time.

Wrong.

Six months later, you should receive your second royalty statement for the book. But it won’t be for the $36,000 you probably expected. It’ll be in the amount of $17,000.

($20,000 minus your agent’s fee.) Six months after that, you’ll get $7,225. Six months later, it’ll be half that amount. Six months later… Each payment will be half as much as the previous one until the amount has been whittled down to nothing. Eventually, you do get your full $80,000. It takes five or six years, though.

If that shocks you, it should.

Somebody is getting screwed, and it is the author.

However, you should consider yourself very fortunate if you have earned out your advance. It is a sign that your book did better than the publisher expected, and that they didn’t pay you a high enough advance in the first place.

Many writers never see a royalty check.

Let’s get back to advances something writers do see if they sell a book.

If your first novel does reasonably well (but is no blockbuster), you might be offered the same amount for your second book. Or maybe a couple of thousand more. (Or they might dump you. Who knows?)

After a few novels that have all sold reasonably well, you might be able to get your advance up to $10,000 or $15,000.

Which isn’t too bad. You’re fairly successful if they offer you that much.

But they probably won’t buy another book from you for a while because, all other factors aside (such as rejections), most publishers don’t want to publish more than one book per year by any author.

So, can you live on $15,000 per year?

Let’s take it to the next step. If you’re very successful (but still not a bestseller), you might be offered an advance of $50,000 or even a little more. And maybe you get a contract for two or three books at that amount. Now we’re talking real money.

Say it’s a three-book contract for $150,000. Sounds great. And it isn’t bad.

The contract, of course, will divide up your payment like a pie being fed to the 101st Airborne. You’ll get a good chunk of on-sign money. (Which will lead to owing a big chunk to your friends at the IRS you need to pay quarterly estimated income taxes, you know. After the on-sign money, your payments will be divvied out in much smaller portions. You’ll get a payment on acceptance of each book, and on publication of each.

Already, we’re talking about a sevenway split. If your contract includes both hardback and paperback publication, the money will arrive on ten different occasions. (These matters vary a lot, depending on many factors.)

If all goes well, you’ll receive most of your $150,000 over a period of three years. This would give you an income of approximately $50,000 per year.

But something might go wrong. Maybe the publisher doesn’t accept your second book, or your third. Maybe your first book doesn’t sell as well as they’d hoped, so they look for ways to get our of the contract.

A lot can go wrong, and usually does.

Many U.S. publishers don’t exactly keep their promises… or their contracts.

Even if you’re lucky enough to get the entire $150,000, it doesn’t seem like quite so much money after it has been spread over a period four or five years.

On a really bad note, the sales of your first or second or third novel might disappoint your publisher, so you don’t get offered another contract. And word gets around that your stuff doesn’t sell so well…

I’ve painted a very gloomy picture, haven’t I? Well, plenty of writers will be quick to point out that I didn’t paint it gloomy enough.

The thing is, you need to know the score.

You don’t want to be taken by surprise by the tough facts of a writer’s life after you’ve sold your first novel and quit your job.

Hang on to that job.