Author Rebecca Brandewyne, who my brother Tod frequently lampoons for her purple prose, offers a terrific article that explains in detail how novelists are paid.
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
Author Rebecca Brandewyne, who my brother Tod frequently lampoons for her purple prose, offers a terrific article that explains in detail how novelists are paid.
And so I reiterate the comforting words I have said to myself since writing the outline to my first novel:
I have a day job. I have a day job. I have a day job.
When you know you can fail spectacularly and don’t care, it relieves an enormous amount of pressure.
I have no day job.
Does anyone know if there’s a general ballpark formula through which one can figure reasonable pb sales based on number of hardback sales? That is, if a book pre-sells 40,000 copies in hardback sales, and gets a 50% return rate–for, obviously, 20,000 final hb sales–what’s a likely pb print run, and what’s a common return rate?
Ms. Brandewyne says that unearned advances have to be returned to the publisher, although publishers rarely request the money.
I thought that was not true. Is she right?
You could have warned us about the music, Lee…
Adam get the hardback deal first and let your agent worry about that formula.
That struck me as odd, too. I’ve never heard of that happening. But the rest of her article rang true to me.
The closest I’ve ever heard of someone needing to return their unrecouped advance is this rather bizarre tale Jervey Tervalon wrote about in the la weekly some months ago, about S&S making him pay back 41K:
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/02/books-tervalon.php
It’s a pretty fascinating story (and makes you wonder who Jervey’s agent is that they couldn’t fix this mess)