“When You Write and Publish Your Book, Here's what Your Publisher's Advance Should Look Like...
--An Expert's Step-by-Step Guide”
Ever wonder what the publisher would offer you? Here is the answer!
How much should you expect as a book advance? Now there’s a question I get at least twice a week. And the answer I always gives seems so arbitrary, but armed with this information, you’ll know ahead of time what to expect, and the one thing you can do so that even a small advance doesn’t matter.
The amounts publishers give for advances aren’t simply pulled out of the air. They’re based on how the industry is doing. I’ll give you some hard and fast numbers to justify it.
This year there will be about 195,000 books published by traditional book publishers. Don’t get strung out about U.K publishers, plus Canadian publishers, plus Australian publishers, plus New Zealand publishers, etc. The number is what you should focus on.
Of that number, about five percent, that’s right, just five percent, will more than 5,000 copies.
Let’s suppose that the average book in this category sells for $30. It’s just a not unrealistic average. That means the author will earn $3 for that book sale. If the author’s book is ‘special,’ it will sell 5,000 copies and the author will get $15,000 in royalties.
So if we suggest that the average author will receive an advance of just $10,000 you can see that I’m not being stingy with the number or the cash.
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In fact, most books won’t even sell enough to make back the advance given to the author.
True, all authors have visions of dollar signs dancing in their heads, “Hey, where’s the $500,000 advance I was looking for?” But the truth is, that’s not likely to happen.
But what does happen is a fountain of information that springs from that 195,000 number.
The first bit of information? If your book is going to be ‘successful,” if it’s going to sell a lot of copies, then you’ve got to stand up from the keyboard, dust off your best suit, and get on the marketing train as quickly and as aggressively as you can.
Just because you’ve been given an advance of $10,000 that doesn’t mean you’re limited to $10,000. You can make as much in additional royalties as you want, if you’re ready to take the task on yourself.
Get on those radio shows, those internet teleseminars (give me a call, please), local television shows, gobble up those print opportunities, speaking engagements, hey, if you’ve got a chance to put your face, your name or your book title before anyone, especially at little or no cost, then you had better take advantage of it.
When you start feeling you’ve turned into a marketing machine, rather than a book author, you’re getting close to what you should be doing.
Next piece of information? Publishers and editors, for all their good intentions, haven’t got a clue about what the public wants. You just can’t be wrong about something that often and take yourself seriously.
So, they specialize. Everyone in the publishing industry specializes. They find a genre that sells moderately well, and they try to become as expert in that area as they can. Maybe it’s romance, maybe it’s horror, maybe it’s how-to around the home. They know what sold last year in that category, so they hunt for something very similar this year.
And even then it doesn’t always work. (Name the number two author in the ‘Harry Potter’ genre. Yea, I can’t think of one either.)
Similarly, publishers, editors and agents all stay away from the dead zones. Very few bookstores are packed with books of poetry.
Anytime you hear something about the book publishing industry, ask yourself what that tells you about your own efforts. Be honest with yourself and ask yourself how you can actually capitalize on that information.
So don’t let the offer of a small advance disappoint you. Your potential is still unlimited.
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