Re: advances

> Well, novels are a little different, but as we all know, they're a
> pretty small portion of the total publishing picture. And even there,
> once you have a track record showing that you complete books on
> schedule, you might get a contract and an advance before completing
> the book.

Advances are usually paid in pieces: x% at signing, x% at submission  
of y% of the MS, x% on acceptance.

> Then you wait for the end of the first 6 month royalty
> period (not 6 months for pub date, though, so the average would be 3
> months) and then another 3 months for your statement and payment.
> That's a total of 2 to 2 3/4 years from completion of ms to first
> royalty statement.
>

Even when it doesn't take that long, it still takes quite a while. For  
my tech books, I had 3 months to write them--that's 3 months of full  
time work for me when I cannot earn any other income. I simply don't  
have the time and energy (other people might). We started GA2 in  
February, finished in late May/early June. It was released in the end  
of September (this was a HUGE rush job to get out while the software  
version was relatively new) and the royalty period ended the end of  
October. We get our first statement in January. Thats long enough!

> I'm not sure I would want to wait that long for my first payment.

Considering that NF books often have to be written quickly which means  
turning down other paying work... the advance is critical to paying  
bills while writing the book.

> I agree that publishers take a huge risk on publishing a book. A
> typical trade book (novels included) costs $20k to launch, minimum.
> And the typical mass market novel is a bigger investment. BUT authors
> have fewer arrows in their quiver, and have invested more of their
> available resources in producing the book, so they're already sharing
> the risk, IMO. I think it IS fair that they should be paid earlier. I
> just wish AEs were more accurate in projecting first year sales.  
> <grin>

Yeah, there's more arbitrage to projecting sales that most AE's really  
have experience with. We couldn't get my publisher to BUDGE on the  
advance even though our first book had been a best-seller (for a tech  
book of course), because conventional wisdom says that the sequel  
always sells worse than the original. And with far less promotion, GA2  
is selling a good bit better than GA1 did. Forecastng sales is more of  
an art than a science, that's for sure!

dej
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