Publishers can pay people. The upsetting thing is who they choose to pay, how they choose to pay them, and whatever calculus they've used to arrive at those decisions doesn't seem equal. This is going to be a hard ongoing conversation, but a necessary one.

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Transcript For Publishing Advances Video

Today, we are talking about publishing advances. And usually, I make my videos to be timeless, a lot of the concepts apply. Today, if you find me five years from now, a lot of the stuff that I'm talking about would still be relevant, I hope, or somewhat relevant, because publishing, as I will mention in a second, is a rather slow industry.

Well, over the weekend, in light of the protests and the rekindled civil rights movement in the wake of George Floyd's death, we have had a lot of conversations about equality in publishing, and rightfully so. Well, over the weekend, an author named L.L. McKinney started a hashtag on Twitter, which was #PublishingPaidMe. And it was basically a call out to authors of all backgrounds to share their advances.

Now, the reason this is so interesting is that publishing has always been...and this contributes to the folly of publishing...publishing has always been a old-world, kind of, old-fashioned, very ancient industry and tradition. You know, we were publishing books hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and some things about that haven't changed. And so while publishing does have a heritage of being a patron of the arts and issuing books and, you know, creating careers, there are also things that go hand in hand with being such an old industry. And one of those is the, sort of, cloak of silence or propriety around the idea of publishing advances.

Now, an advance, how I'm talking about it is an advance against royalties, which means money forwarded to the writer in exchange for a book as part of a book contract. And then when the book sells, the book comes out and it starts earning royalties. The publisher is first paid back their advance, which was advanced to the writer, and then, if the book earns out, the writer starts earning royalties on top of their advance.

Now, a lot of books don't earn out their royalties, historically, I'm sorry, their advances, historically, and so an advance may be the only money that a writer sees for a project. And so there's been a lot of, sort of, very mannered attitude about advances in which we don't really talk about that. And I think it's perpetuated to this day by Publishers Marketplace. Publishers Marketplace is a deals database and I love it. It's, sort of, the gossip sheet where a lot of agents and publishers hang out, kind of, seeing what everybody else is doing. And they don't talk about money though, everything is a nice deal, a very nice deal. And it's all this coded language. Of course, there's a key for the terms right at the top of every deals report, but it's basically in $50,000-increments at first, and then slightly larger increments. You know, everybody wants a good deal, which is when we break six figures.

And so there's this, sort of, like coded language about advances, and a lot of writers are encouraged by their agents to, sort of, not discuss money outside of the deal. It's, kind of, this very, like I keep saying, mannered way of approaching money, whereas, like, in tech, we know the CEO's compensation. We know a stock price. We know bonuses. All of these things are, sort of, reported and become part of the conversation. But in publishing and for a lot of authors, that has really been, sort of, under the table, and it's encouraged by publishers, it's encouraged by agents, not necessarily in a nefarious way, but it's just...it's part of being in such an old industry.

And #PublishingPaidMe, this hashtag has seen participation, thousands of writers have stepped forward to talk about their advances. And for the first time, there's a Google spreadsheet, which I will put a link to, of people reporting their advances by category, people reporting their advances by series, and you see some really interesting things. And I think some of the things that you see are, unfortunately, expected, and the purpose... So the author who originated this hashtag said that the purpose is to have a conversation about how race affects advances, and how writers of color are maybe compensated differently. And I think that was the supposition that started the hashtag, and, of course, it went on to bear fruit. Unfortunately, there is a disparity in the way that some publishers have been paying writers of color in terms of advances.

There are many things that go into a publishing advance. As a former literary agent, I've, sort of, seen many sides of the issue -- the publisher side, the agent side, the author side of the issue. And so it really is a combination of if you're a debut, how much buzz there is about the debut, whether the publisher believes with their... You know, nobody has a crystal ball, but with their knowledge of the marketplace, do they believe that this book will sell well? That, kind of, dictates one level of advance. Do they believe that this book will win awards or place really well in schools, do really well with the library market? That goes into the, sort of, calculus of the publisher's internal P&L sheet. Of course, whether the book has a lot of buzz going into it, whether the agent has brought the book to auction, whether there are pre-acts or multiple offers on the book, also plays into the level of the advance that the author receives.

And then there are some of these other factors, which we want to bring to light with this, or we're seeing come to light, with this, which is does race, heritage, background play into the level of advance that is offered to an author? Does gender play into it? Does genre play into it? Certain styles of books, categories, genres are compensated differently, historically, just because of the sales volume that the publisher expects in specific genres. The size of publisher plays into the deal amount, which means some of the bigger publishers can pay more, they don't always choose to, as is becoming painfully clear, and they can be pretty selective in terms of who they choose to pay, which is also becoming painfully clear. But a smaller press, an independent press, may not be able to offer an advance at all. They may offer a royalty-only deal where there's no money offered upfront, but the share of royalties is usually higher on the backend. So there's a lot of, kind of, complicated calculus that goes into determining an advance amount from the publisher's belief about the sales, any buzz running the deal itself, if Hollywood has gotten wind of a deal or a project, and they're expressing interest, that goes into the consideration of the advance. This is usually for debuts, when we don't have anything to go off of, in terms of previous sales.

Now, one thing that is interesting to me, looking at some of these reports of advances, outside of, sort of, how various demographics are compensated is this idea of you know you have these writers who follow an upward trajectory in their careers, so they get a modest advance of, let's say, $15,000 for a novel, and then maybe it sells pretty well. The publisher's pretty happy with them. They go up to maybe 25, and then start to see 50, and then maybe they have a blockbuster series which breaks that good deal, the six-figure mark that a lot of writers, you know, are... There's just a little bit more sexiness, a little bit more cache to a good deal. And one of the controversies, of course, of the #PublishingPaidMe was this... Oh, god, the book, hold on, I have to look it up, but what was it? It's right here, yeah, Jesmyn Ward, she struggled to secure a six-figure deal, even though her previous book, which was "Salvage the Bones" won the National Book Award. There was this sort of feeling in place to break that six-figure mark. So the six-figure mark, for a lot of writers, is, sort of, the goal or something very important so signify that you've arrived on the literary scene.

And so it's interesting to see which writers have an upward trajectory. And then there's some writers whose debut advance was a little bit better or higher than subsequent advances, and that tells me that maybe the publisher had higher hopes for the initial installment, it didn't sell as well. They wanted to keep working with the author or maybe the author's next idea was not viewed as being as commercial as their previous effort. And so one of the stories that I see playing out, regardless of the demographic piece, the gender inequality piece, which is, unfortunately there, in glaring obvious detail, is sort of the many different trajectories that an author's career can go.

And there are some...for example, Scott Westerfeld is a well-known, young adult, middle-grade author, and he had this huge success with the "Uglies" series. And then some of his books after the "Uglies" series, I mean, it was a huge commercial blockbuster but the series cannot run forever, and so then his compensation took a dip and then, "Leviathan" was acquired, and that brought him back to a higher advance level. And then he came back with...I think he's doing more "Uglies" book now, which, of course, are commanding big advances because the publisher knows that it's, sort of, a sure thing.

And so it's just really interesting to see not only this, kind of, expected upward trajectory of "I write my next book, it's better, I have a bigger readership, I should be paid more," but, sort of, a lot of these ups and downs. And we see authors moving from a big publisher to a small publisher, smaller advance, but you start thinking why they maybe made that choice. Advance amount is not, sort of, the only thing that a writer might concern themselves with. For example, the marketing plan or a publisher's willingness to market their work is something that I would pay careful attention to, so maybe out of an advance that could be offered comes some money that's going to be earmarked for promoting the book, and maybe that's more valuable to the author. I was reading, and I forget who it was, but somebody was saying about this #PublishingPaidMe revelation this week that they prefer royalties to an advance. And so if a book gets a more modest advance, but then is really, really supported by the house on the backend and turns into royalty money, that's not necessarily a bad way to go either.

And so I think, yes, publishing needs to do better, not only in terms of hiring people of color, in terms of marketing support, sales support, editorial support, up top, in the, sort of, the publisher level, the C-level. Publishing right now, this is based on the Lee and Low 2019 numbers is, I think, 76% white, 80-something % cis-female, 74% straight, and 89% identifies as non-disabled. And so publishing has a heck of a way to go, in order to, sort of, not only represent the diversity of the real world within the publishing ranks, but also champion writers of color, black writers, publish books for all audiences featuring characters of all backgrounds. I think publishing has a huge way to go.

I think publishing should pay people equally, without regard to demographics, that is...we're seeing very, very clearly, a lot of disparities there, where one background of writer is getting paid just across the board differently than another, whether it's male/female, whether it's white/black. There's a lot of work to be done still, to not only publish diverse voices, but compensate diverse voices and diverse writers in the way that publishing can compensate. I think that, at the end of the day, is going to be surprising and upsetting for a lot of people, because we can clearly see that publishing can pay people. They can. The upsetting thing is who they choose to pay, how they choose to pay them, and whatever calculus they've used to arrive at those decisions doesn't seem equal. And so there's this idea of well, we can open our wallets, but we're very selective in terms of how and to whom we open those wallets. So I think that's gonna be a really, really hard ongoing conversation, a necessary ongoing conversation.

But the other considerations that I saw emerging from the numbers and the data are a writer's individual trajectory, and that's not to say that everybody follows that nice, clean, upward line. Some people take a dip. Some people find themselves on a midlist and seen midlist-style advances, rather than, kind of, big, exciting debut advances, or big, exciting post-award advances. And so there's a lot to think about, in terms of sure, the advance amount gets a lot of attention. What other things does a publisher do for a writer, for a writer's career, or not do, that also has an effect on the bottom line of a book after it has, sort of, launched and is starting to live its sales life, which includes royalties and the, kind of, advance and royalties balance that a book might see over its life.

So a really interesting conversation, a really great thing that has happened with so many people across backgrounds volunteering to share their advances, this is what I think is the best thing that has come out of this, which is there has always been a cone of silence around publishing advances, and now, we have this conversation and we have this data. And it's, sort of, this idea that this system can't keep going without silence, and without everybody, sort of, very politely playing along to this idea that advance numbers are taboo, they're sacred. We don't talk about them. They're just rumors. They're written up in all the magazines and whispered about, but bringing those numbers, the hard numbers into the open, bringing this conversation into the open, I think, is going to be really, really interesting going forward in seeing what happens.

But for anybody looking at just the overall topic of publishing advances, maybe this video has given you some additional insight into what else might be going on with determining an advance number and also this idea that every writer's career does take a slightly different path, and we can't just expect one thing, or think we know exactly what's going to happen based on a previous advance or a previous book. Every book really is different. Every writer really is different. Now, I'm hoping that what this brings about is that every writer will be treated similarly and with equality, not differently, which is what is clearly currently happening. But we now have a whole lot more to add to this conversation about publishing advances.

So my name is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. This has been a timely and interesting video, after a heck of a week in publishing, and I hope that the many people in publishing in the working ranks, as well as the top, continue to make good decisions and equitable decisions, and decisions towards justice and fairness for all of the people working as well as writing in the publishing industry. And so here's to a good story and thank you for listening.

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