Re: advances

--- In [email protected], Marion Gropen wrote:
> As for novels, a normal book takes about 1 1/2 to 2 years from  
> contract to publication, given all the work that has to be done on  
> the completed ms before release, and the lead times for the most  
> powerful marketing tools, for advance orders, and similar  
> requirements. 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.
> I'm not sure I would want to wait that long for my first payment.

Absolutely agree. You've described one of the basic reasons I've never
bothered with the big pubbers and instead chose to epublish my stuff.
The other main reason is the other potentially huge chunk of 'wait'
time -- the time it takes to find a publisher who's in a good mood
when your MS or query arrives.
Adding everything up since the day I began E-selling my titles in
1997, then dividing by the current number of titles (29), each of my
titles has garnered roughly twice what I could have expected as a
typical newbie-author advance. (using $3K as 'typical')
This is a vastly inaccurate bit of math, given that my SF titles have
earned *much* more than my non-SF titles, but for me it's about
overall quarterly and annual supplemental retirement income.
Ed Howdershelt - Abintra Press
Science Fiction & Semi-Fiction
http://www.AbintraPress.com
My Fictionwise Ratings: http://tinyurl.com/26v45



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