Track Changes: Advances (Part 1)

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Track Changes: Advances (Part 1)

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Let’s talk about money: how do authors get paid, how much do authors get paid, and what do they need to keep in mind when the checks roll in?

We catch up with Jennifer de Leon as she prepares for the release of her debut young adult novel, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, on August 4. (Hear her First Draft interview here.)

Courtney Maum, author of Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer’s Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book lays out the basics of book advances.

Holly Root, founder of Root Literary and Seth Fishman, literary agent with The Gernert Company give a helpful overview of how much authors are paid across a variety of age categories and genres. And Sarah Burnes, literary agent with The Gernert Company, walks through what earning out means.

Then, we get into #PublishingPaidMe with Tochi Onyebuchi, who, along with L.L. MicKinney, started the viral publishing industry pay transparency movement.

CATCH UP ON THE SERIES SO FAR:

Episode 1: Publishing 101

Episode 2: Agents: Who Are They, What Do They Do, And How Do You Get One?

Bonus Episode: Publishing in the time of COVID

Episode 3: Selling the Book (Part 1)

Episode 4: Selling the Book (Part 2)

Sarah Enni:  There are many things every new published writer needs to be prepared for. One-star Goodreads reviews, your second cousin who has a great idea for a picture book. And, inevitably, an uncomfortable conversation like this:

Jenn de Leon:  I went to my checkup and the dentist was like, “So you got a book coming out?” “Yeah.” She's like, “So how much did you get for a book?” And I'm in the chair and I'm like, “I don't know. You’re about to stick a needle in my mouth!” I just don't know how to answer that. 

Sarah Enni: That’s Jennifer de Leon, whose journey to publishing her debut novel, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, we’ve been covering in this series. Jenn has been writing toward publication for years, which means by the time she was ready to publish, she’d already  developed a tight knit writing community. And she had a good baseline expectation for how authors are paid.

Jenn de Leon: I had been to panels and talked to writer friends and so I got a sense of like, you are given a payment for the book in advance, essentially, though you've already written the book.  But then you're going to edit it and you might get paid in four chunks in three chunks, it depends.

Sarah Enni:  Basically, she knew she wouldn’t get one big fat check immediately after signing her deal memo.

Jenn de Leon:  And I also knew many times it's very minimal. And then taking the agent's cut out of it, and taxes, and then the fact that it's spread out over a year or more, it can really feel like maybe nothing. So I had that expectation.

Sarah Enni: But even knowing all of that, Jen was left with one very big important question.

Jennifer de Leon: If you sell a novel, what are we talking like, $10,000, $50,000, $1000? Can someone just tell me?

Sarah Enni: I’m Sarah Enni, author of Tell Me Everything and creator and host of First Draft. And this is Track Changes, a special First Draft series covering everything you don’t know you don’t know about publishing.

Today: The ins and outs of how, and how much, authors get paid.

Let’s start by defining a very important term: advance.

Courtney Maum: In my understanding and my experience, an advance is an amount of money that's paid to acquire your project.

Sarah Enni: That’s Courtney Maum, who we met in the very first episode of Track Changes. Courtney is the author of three novels and, most recently, the non-fiction publishing guide, Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer’s Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book.

So, publishers give authors an advance payment against the royalties an author will earn from sales of their book. Royalty is a fancy word for the percentage of money an author makes from each individual book that is sold.

Being paid an advance means you get a guaranteed minimum amount of money, rather than relying solely on royalties. It also means, that if you sell enough copies, the royalties from all those books sold will equal the amount of your advance. And then any copies you sell after that point will earn you cold hard cash, above and beyond your advance. We’ll come back to all that in a bit. But first, let’s get back to the advance, and how it is structured.

Courtney Maum:  In general, if you're at the larger houses, advances can be substantial enough that they'll divide them into four payments if you have a hardcover coming out. So normally, you would get the first 25% upon acquisition, when the editor actually decides to purchase your project, then you'd get the other 25% when all of the developmental edits have been accomplished and your editor feels like, “Okay, this is the book that we're sending to copy edits.”

Sarah Enni: So you often get the first chunks of your advance before the book is published.

Courtney Maum: Then you get the third 25% upon publication of the hardcover. And then more or less, let's say seven months to a year later, you'll get the remaining 25% if you have a paperback.

Sarah Enni: That’s just one way that your advance could be split up. Sometimes the split is three ways, sometimes four, and now in some cases even five ways.  And it isn’t always an even split. Now,  what Courtney said just there is noteworthy. Not every book that comes out in hardback GETS a paperback version. If a book does not perform well enough, a publisher could decide that investing in a paperback version is not worthwhile.

So if your advance is predicated on being paid when the paperback comes out, make sure to talk to your agent about including language that gets you the final 25% of your advance, n o matter what. That’s why it’s important to read and understand your deal memo and contract - something we’ll get into more in a future episode.

Also important to note that with smaller presses, the payments are usually just split into two, instead of four.So, at this point, you’re probably wondering, what determines how much you’ll actually get for your advance?

Well, like most things in this industry: It depends. It depends on so many factors, the large majority of those being totally outside of an author’s control. But a couple industry experts were willing to sit down with me to give a broad overview of what people might be looking at for advances based on things like age category and genre.

Holly Root: Pricing is even so category specific. Like the price for a YA novel is not the price for a science fiction novel is not the price for an adult novel. There is such a range.

Seth Fishman: Let's go through categories and we'll just pop it quick.

Sarah Enni: You might remember these voices, Holly Root of Root Literary and Seth Fishman of The Gernert Company, two literary agents we spoke with a few episodes back.

Let’s start with picture books. With picture books, the illustrations are as important—or possibly more important—than the words in telling the story. Picture books are traditionally about thirty-two pages long, and there are illustrations on every page, or on one page of every pair of facing pages.

Seth Fishman: There's a difference between the artist and illustrator. Writers who are of debut unknowness can get anywhere from $7,000 to around $30,000, I would say, as an average. And let’s be clear, you can go way above this.

Holly Root:  Yeah. And then there's always somebody who's like “$2,500!” and you're like, “Oh, pumpkin. Aw.”

Seth Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. “Well if you want to do it.” And then the illustrator is a different game. The illustrator will probably get, in the $7,000 scenario, could get $15,000 to $50,000 depending. You could get a really famous illustrator and they'd bring them on because they love the project. It depends on where you're at. But if you're a debut illustrator, then you're getting $15,000 to $50,000 as well. That's the picture books.

Holly Root: That's about right.

Seth Fishman: That’s about right, okay, great. And then we have middle-grade.

Sarah Enni: Middle-grade fiction refers to books written for readers between the ages of eight and twelve. Middle-grade books are generally about 30,000 to 50,000 words long, with exceptions… particularly for fantasy. The term “middle grade” does not refer to genre. It is an age-based categorization that can apply to science fiction, mystery, contemporary, non-fiction, and all other genres, so long as they are written with eight to twelve-year-old’s in mind

Holly Root: Middle-grade, oh lord, I mean it is such a range. Middle-grade, I think, doesn't have as high of a top. Like in YA, it's not that weird for someone to just freak out and give you six figures and you're like, “Oh, okay, cool.” That doesn't happen as much in middle-grade. I feel like middle-grade is $25,000 to $40,000.

Seth Fishman: Yeah. 25 to 40. That’s about right.

Holly Root: Yeah.

Seth Fishman: That's the Wild West, the middle-grade. The numbers there, those books can sell forever.

Holly Root: It's all backend.

Seth Fishman: So that was middle-grade and those are the average. We're just talking about just norms. And then YA…

Holly Root: The biggest chunk of the band.

Seth Fishman: The biggest chunk of the band. YA.

Sarah Enni:  Like middle-grade fiction, young adult fiction refers to an age category. Young adult books are written for readers between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, and those books are generally between 50,000 and 75,000 words long, with exceptions. Again, notably in the fantasy genre.

Holly Root: YA is impossible because I feel like there are two bands.

Seth Fishman: Yeah, this is a tale of two bands.

Holly Root: It is a tale of two bands.

Seth Fishman: There's 20 to 40

Holly Root: There's 20 to 40 and there's a 100 to 200.

Seth Fishman: Yeah. We often talk about numbers whereby the smaller advances, are enthusiasm buys. The larger, larger advances are enthusiasm buys. And those middle ones can sometimes oddly be lost. The $200,000 one, which is kind of crazy. But I dunno, I just like to think that we make up the difference no matter what… us agents.

Holly Root: Somebody has to push it. The push often starts with us. It is weird, you can have people who are like, “I got $150,000! I'm set.” And you're like, “I know for a fact that your publisher has paid seven people that in your season.” And then there's other books that you know got paid $15,000 and they're the belle of the ball. It's the weirdest.

Seth Fishman:  They just got the John Green blurb.

Holly Root: Yeah, it's the weirdest.

Seth Fishman: Okay. So that was YA. Now adult breaks into another. So YA has all these genres, but you still throw it into one category. So when you go into the adult space, we actually do break it out. So sci-fi and fantasy, for instance, even sci-fi and fantasy separates differently.

But basically I would say, depending on where you're selling it to, you can start at $7,500 and probably move to about $30,000 as your averages.

Holly Root: Yes. It's a longer gestation. So it's not that nobody gets paid, you know, six figures out of the gate; that can happen.

Seth Fishman:  People get paid very well there.

Holly Root:  But it's more common that people will buy one, publish it. And then re-contract based on numbers, than it is that they will just go wild. Because it's a mature market.

Seth Fishman: It's a mature market, and it's also a small group of publishers. So like Del Rey is more interested in getting the big splashy buy, whereby, Orbit will not pay anything ever for anything. But then they have lots of success. They have a number of things turn into TV shows and they do fine. So they build. And they will pay you at some point. And so different places do different things. So that's sci-fi fantasy. We're moving along. Okay.

Holly Root: We're doing good. Literary fiction? Oh lord.

Seth Fishman: Literary fiction is, I don't know, I think it's a two band thing as well. I think it's a similar run, right?

Holly Root: It is. Maybe $10,000 to $30,000 and then, yeah, $250,000 to $500,000.

Seth Fishman: People love giving you $250,000.

Holly Root: People love $250,000. $250,000 feels nice.

Seth Fishman: They just feel like it's a good number.

Holly Root: Feels good. It's meaningful. So commercial fiction, like book club women's fiction, is generally gonna be also in that like $25,000 to $40,000 range for that first deal. Romance gets weird because there's so many different formats in play. If you're looking at a mass market original, if you're looking at a trade paper original, if you're looking at e-original, which isn't as much of a thing anymore, but once upon a time was.

And those advances can really vary wildly and widely. So at the very low end you'd be looking at like a $5,000, which is about where Harlequin category hangs out, up to let's say $20,000 as like the most common amounts. And then there are outliers. Again, if you have a bunch of bidders, you can really get a lot above that.

And then nonfiction is like all platform. And I think nonfiction too because the way that those sell, people… it's lottery tickets. People are just buying lottery tickets based on whose fan base is gonna turn out.

Sarah Enni:  Non-fiction books sell on proposal, which means the author works with their agent on an idea for a book and puts together a package that explains the idea, provides an overview of what the book will cover, and often provides sample chapters as well. So, a non-fiction author does NOT write the entire book before selling it, as is often the case with fiction.

Holly and Seth note that when it comes to non-fiction, that advance is to be used to pay for either a ghost writer, as is often the case for high-profile celebrity memoirs. Or to fund the time-intensive research that goes into writing a non-fiction book.

Okay, wow. That was a lot of information. Nothing that Holly and Seth outlined is written in stone. But I hope having those two walk through the categories gives you some understanding of the ballpark you’re in.

But when it comes to advances, there are two other key things you need to keep in mind. The first is: Royalties/Earning out, and the second is Taxes/Fees.

You may have heard this phrase before: Earning out. What does it mean? Remember that your advance, or your guaranteed minimum amount of payment for your book, is an advance against royalties. My agent, Sarah Burnes with The Gernert Company, explains:

Sarah Burnes:  A royalty is… a book has a list price which say is $20. The author earns say 10% of that $20-of the list price. This is variable, but these are easier numbers. So you get $2 a book. So if you have the $100,000 advance, if you've sold 50,000 hardcovers, say you sold 50,001 hardcovers, you have then earned out.

Sarah Enni:  Alright, let’s break this down a bit more. In this hypothetical scenario, your 10%  royalty means you earn $2 for every copy sold of your book. And, in this hypothetical scenario, your publisher has given you an advance of $100,000, which basically means they’ve paid you as if you have already sold 50,000 copies of the book. That’s fantastic, because there is no guarantee that you will sell 50,000 copies of your book. In fact, as a side note, that is a wild and crazy number. Almost NO ONE sells that many copies of their books.

So, your publisher will collect the royalties on every book sold until they make back that $100,000. But the minute you sell your 50,001st copy, you have gone above and beyond what the publisher fronted you as your advance. You’ve earned out.

So that means, you just got $2. And you will earn another $2 on the 50,002nd book, and the 50,003rd book, and every subsequent book that you sell.

An annoying detail of this whole thing is that most publishing houses pay royalties based on six month periods. And they have another three to four month window to do those calculations and pay the author. So if you earn royalties in the six-period ending December 31, you’ll get that check sometime in March or April. And you have no way of knowing how big that check will be.

Oh, publishing!

But, earning out sounds great, right?  Like, “Yeah, I’ll just do that!” Well..

Courtney Maum: Earning out would basically be you have sold enough copies of your book to have earned back your advance. And when that happens then you can start touching royalties. Now again, if you're getting a $2,000 advance from an independent press, obviously that's gonna be a lot easier to earn out than a $200,000 advance at a Big Five where you'll have to sell actually an enormous amount of copies.

So certainly at the Big Five there is sort of an unstated understanding that most writers do not earn back their advance. I've heard numbers thrown around that publishers are happy if authors earn back 70% of their advance. But the market's quite restricted right now, especially for fiction. So I'm not sure that number is holding right now. I bet you it's a lot lower.

Sarah Enni:  According to Poets & Writers’ Complete Guide to Being a Writer, only about one-third of authors ever earn out their advance. So, as they say: plan for the worst, hope for the best.

And look… authors have varying philosophies around advances and earning out.

Some authors advocate for getting the most money you possibly can for an advance. If a publishing house pays you a lot of money, they’re invested in getting their money back. Therefore, the thinking goes, the publisher will commit to marketing and publicizing your book, and making it a success.

Though that can absolutely be true, it isn’t a guarantee. And keep in mind that publishing is an emotional business. Here’s my agent again, Sarah Burnes.

Sarah Burnes: There is an idea out there that the bigger the advance, the more a publisher will pay. And I think that's true… and it's not true. Where, if a publisher is in for $1 million advance, they gotta get that back. It's also true that I've sold books for a lot of money that the publisher then didn't get good feedback on from the sales department, and they didn't pay any more attention to it.

So it really always comes back to the book itself. And I have books that are publishing right now that didn't sell for that much money. The publishers just put absolutely everything behind because they're so excited about it. Sometimes there's a funny disconnect.

Sarah Enni:  Other authors I know have accepted deals for less money. Because in their opinion, the most important thing was to earn out their advance. That means you were a good bet for your publisher, and it looks good on your sales record, and that can help you when it comes to selling another book. According to these authors, that gives them a better chance of building a long-lasting career.

And both of these strategies have merit. It’s important to be thinking about this as a career strategy. And to get your agent involved in the conversation, so they can help you keep your expectations in line with reality. And so they have a crystal clear idea of what is most important to you.

Seth Fishman: Our goal is, of course, to get you the most money. But in reality is to have you writing forever. And in order to do that, your sales and your advances need to be moving upwards… or at least staying the same. So my goal is whatever number we get you, then we succeed to the level where your next book is a little higher, and a little higher.

Now, I would love it to be a lot higher! Or I'd love it to be whatever, you know. But as long as we're moving upwards, then at some point in time we'll be at an indisputably successful place. And that is the goal. So you get a $10,000 advance, earn that advance out, let's get $25,000 next time. Earn that advance out, let's get $50,000 next time.

Sarah Enni: Just as another aside, to hopefully give everyone more context to author earnings...earlier this year, I conducted an anonymous survey of writer friends and acquaintances. The results are not scientifically valid or peer reviewed in any way, they’re simply here to help show just how wide ranging advances can be.

Of the 69 authors who responded to the question about advances, 46.5% made $75,000 or less on their most recent advance. 58% of those authors made $100,000 or less. A quarter of respondents earned between $100,000 and $300,000. Another 14.5 percent made more than $300,0000.

Now again, this is not a scientific or peer reviewed survey. It’s not science. But I think what’s really important to note here is that most of the authors who responded to this are at Big 5 publishers, and the vast majority of them are making $100,000 or less on their book deals.

So, I know everyone dreams of being the New York Times bestselling author with a $500,000  book deal, but you’re more likely to be the rule than the exception.

Okay, now on to the second thing to keep in mind when it comes to advances: Taxes and fees. Here’s Courtney Maum again:

Courtney Maum: A hard truth is that 15% goes to your agent. Hopefully they've done such an awesome job that you want to give them more. And then you have what, about 20% going to the IRS. It can be even higher if you're self-employed. So it's very important for people to budget their advances. It might seem like you have a decent chunk of money coming in, but not all of that is yours.

Sarah Enni:  If you live in the U.S., then come the end of the year, or the end of the quarter, you’re looking at: federal income tax, state income tax, and social security and Medicare taxes.  Financial planning can save you some true heartache.

Courtney Maum: I think it's incredibly important, regardless of the amount of money that you earn, to try to figure out a way to save some money. Even with substantial advances, $100,000. If that's coming in four payments over a year, if you have dependents, if you live in a city, you're self-employed, you have to pay for your own insurance, yada, yada. All of a sudden there's really not a lot left.

So if an author can't afford a financial advisor, I would try very hard to make a financial advisor friend who will give you advice pro bono. Because there are some loopholes, like with our current administration, the Trump administration, sometimes having an S Corp benefits the self-employed author versus you know, an LLC.

Sarah Enni:  An S Corp versus LLC may be the last thing on your mind when you’re in the midst of final edits on your masterpiece. But get comfortable with these terms! You cannot put this stuff on the back burner. Courtney experienced the downsides of that first hand.

Courtney Maum: I was there, I was just getting my 1099’s and I was absolutely walloped, walloped! It's like I saw my whole book advance disappear and it was really heartrending to hear a couple of years later that I could have gotten 20% of that back if I'd had an S Corp. So, I do think that a financial advisor is worth the investment if you're getting a somewhat substantial advance.

Sarah Enni: The other reason it’s so, so, so, so, so important to be thinking about what to do with your money before it  just appears in your checking account: an advance is not a salary. I’m gonna clear my throat and say that again. An advance is not a salary!

Just because Big Deal Publisher paid you $100,000 for a book does not mean that you will now make a minimum of $100,000 every time you type “The end.”  It does not mean that at all.

Courtney Maum: Another really important consideration for advances is, whatever you receive for your first book, that might be the most money you ever see. Your second advance could be less. Your third advance could be less than your second.

It’s not said to authors enough that whatever you get for your book advance, be prepared.

If you manage to get in a second book, for that second book advance to be less. Your advances are not a reflection of some annual salary that you're gonna have for the rest of your life unless you're fired. It unfortunately doesn't work like that.

Sarah Enni:  It is a kind of harsh truth….

Courtney Maum: And in fact you have to keep writing books and they have to perform and the money comes, the money goes, things fluctuate so incredibly that some sort of sound investment strategy is very smart.

Sarah Enni:  Just a few days before the release of this episode, publishing advances had something of a viral moment.  The hashtag #PublishingPaidMe was introduced by authors L.L. McKinney and Tochi Onyebuchi to shine a light on pay disparity between Black and non-Black authors, especially white authors. It’s exactly the kind of transparency that I hoped for and wanted to align this Track Changes series with.

Tochi took the time to sit down with me and answer questions about how #PublishingPaidMe came about, what they gleaned from the initial data, how he, L.L., and the many other volunteers behind this effort are hoping to parse and distribute the knowledge, and what they hope comes out of this effort.

Tochi Onyebuchi:  I am Tochi Onyebuchi, author of most recently Riot Baby, my adult debut. I am also the author of three young adult novels, Beasts Made of Night, Crown of Thunder, and most recently War Girls. Thank you for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Sarah Enni:  Okay. Let’s dive in. Do you mind explaining what #PublishingPaidMe with a hashtag is?

Tochi Onyebuchi: So, #PublishingPaysMe, the hashtag, which basically started on Twitter June 6th, 2020, came about as a result of quite a few things. A confluence of circumstances given what has been happening over the past I’d say particularly the past couple of months, but most definitely the past couple of weeks, and even the past few days between the pandemic and the aftermath of the George Floyd killing.

And so what precipitated this effort was that this past week, particularly given the context of so much of the, basically, the uprising that’s happening in this country along lines of bringing about a more racially equitable society. Several publishing companies, particularly members of the Big 5, put out statements affirming that Black Lives Matter.

But it was the typical vague, occasionally mealy-mouth type of sentiment. There was no way to actually hold them accountable for their affirmation of Black lives. And so we decided to try to take a step in doing that. I think it might’ve been a tweet of mine on June 5th that was like, “Book publishers, we see your Black Lives Matter statements. And we’re going to need you to have that same energy when it comes to the conversation about Black writers and book advances. Because if you think the receipts are bad now, it’s about to be CVS on this website.” Was, I believe, my wording.

And the tweet blew up. It got a ton of retweets. A metric ton of “likes”. So it was very clear that this was a conversation that needed to happen and needed to happen in the open because then it gets easier to demand accountability. So, the following day, I and L.L McKinney, another young adult author, we got together and she launched the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe. And we thought the discussion would be confined to young adult, SFF (science fiction fantasy). That was the world that we operated in for the most part.  And then Roxanne Gay tweeted her total for her advances. And it blew up. It blew up.

But it was very illuminating because a lot of people, particularly from the outside who would see a particular author’s totals, particularly if they were a Black author or just an author of color in general and they would know that this author is critically acclaimed, they’ve won several awards, maybe even hit the New York Times bestsellers list. What they got, in comparison to a white peer or what have you, pennies on the dollar. And their jaws would hit the floor.

N.K. Jemison published her totals as well and people were gobsmacked. Even after winning the Hugo, she’s getting paid for an advance less than $100,000 a book, which was wild to a lot of people.  People would see that and assume, based on a person’s success or visibility or what have you, that they’re some millionaire or something like that.

So it was this very amorphous thing that came together and then, as it was happening and we realized that we had something on our hands, a bunch of people leapt on the data collection effort. Because it was very important that if we’re going to try to turn this into something that can result in actions to make the landscape more equitable, we would need data points. We can’t just come to publishers or raise anecdotal evidence.

Very early on a bunch of people hopped onto the data collection effort and were able to hoover up a lot of the numbers that were put out. And it was even just a back of the napkin glance, the compilation was startling. It was, in many ways the confirmation of various assumptions that we had, or suspicions that we had, but startling nonetheless. So it was a very ad hoc effort that coalesced very, very, very quickly.

Sarah Enni:  So you and I are speaking the day after this happened, so I don’t want to ask you to analyze for analysis that will come later, of course. You’ll have more time with the data. But I’d love to hear about initial impressions and also hear what your plans are as far as analyzing the data and what kind of information you want to pull from it and express to people.

Tochi Onyebuchi:  One of the things that has happened is the revelation of just how pervasive and omnipresent inequality is in the United States, particularly between Black and non-Black people. You see this with regards to medical care, you see this with regards to the treatment of essential slash expendable workers during the pandemic, during all of these lockdowns that happen. You see it in policing, you see it with regards to incarceration, and you see it in the publishing industry.

And one of the things that makes these disparities and these inequities so entrenched is information asymmetry. So the fact that it’s very much discouraged to talk about how much money you make in publishing, if you’re an author. There’s a sort of encouraged industry silence around that sort of thing. And that harms authors, but more particularly than that, that harms authors from marginalized backgrounds, and that more specifically harms Black authors. And so what #PublishingPaysMe was intended to do was to highlight a lot of these disparities by lifting the veil with regards to book advances, and we chose that very specific and particular data point for it.

And that’s also a commentary on the financial feasibility of making a career as a writer. There are some people who have structural advantages who are able to do that. And there are many, many, many people who aren’t. And one of the things that the #PublishingPaysMe hashtag made very, very, very evident over the course of twelve hours, was that a lot of the people who can’t are authors of color, specifically Black authors.

It is a way to bring all these conversations that have been happening in the shadows out into the open. And the main thrust of it was to highlight the disparity in advances between Black and non-Black authors. And a lot of people would gawk at the numbers, or would see the numbers and cry. But the point wasn’t to castigate an author that got paid a high six figures for a debut young adult trilogy, we’re not trying to cap any sort of ceiling. But we are trying to bring attention to how low the floor is for Black authors. And how that floor, on average, is so different  from the floor on which stands their non-Black peers.

Sarah Enni: So advances are complicated. We have just had a whole episode explaining how they break down and how people should  be really keeping in mind that that full amount is not just gonna pop up into your bank account. And also, an advance does not represent the full amount of support that a publisher is giving your book.

And by that I mean, they have to give you an advance that they also can push books with marketing and they can put the full force of the house behind something. So there’s a lot of other ways that publishers can show support for authors. So I’m interested in hearing how you guys decided to focus on advances, and what we can learn by focusing on dollar amounts.

Tochi Onyebuchi: The reason we focused on advances is because there is so much context in publishing. It’s not just the advance that is the only element of the equation, but you also look at publicity efforts. How is a publishing house, how is an imprint, going to push a book? How are they going to market it? How are they going to get it into people’s hands? How are they going to get its cover in front of eyeballs? How are they going to get the author out in places to talk about it and to get people to buy the book?

And that varies across publishers, across imprints, even across publicists. Even within the same imprint, you could have two different publicists that have two different philosophies, or two different methods, or two different backgrounds to take advantage of in order to market a particular book.

So we get it. It’s a very complex equation, a very complex ecosystem, there are a ton of moving parts. At the same time, that context cannot continually be used as an excuse to entrench racial disparities in publishing. Particularly when it comes to something as concrete and tangible and meaningful as how much money a person is being paid.  The reason we chose advances was that out of that entire complex ecosystem, that was the most obvious and most convenient data point.

And a lot of us, we look at advances as the publisher making a bet on us. Granted, that bet can also manifest in their publicity efforts, but essentially that bet is how much do they expect this book to make? How much faith do they have in it? What do they think the audience is for this book? So many baked in biases and prejudices in the industry inform that calculation.

Sarah Enni: What do you have to say for someone who is perusing this thread and has their heart drop, precipitously, with this information? What do you have to say to someone like that?

Tochi Onyebuchi: A lot of people clicked on the hashtag and scrolled through for maybe about two minutes before having to shut their laptop in righteous fury, indignation, and bottomless despair. And some of that was established authors who where like, “Look, I’ve been hustling for ten plus years, fifteen years, and I’ve just been trying to make this work. And I’ve been publishing book after book, after book. And I’m just looking at these totals like, man, do I just need to find a different line of work?”

That’s very dispiriting to hear, but also perhaps even more disheartening than that were all these aspiring authors of color, all these aspiring Black authors who were like, “I wanted to be a writer so bad.” Or, “I’ve been working towards this goal for so long. And looking at these totals is just so discouraging. Does my story even matter if this is the dollar amount that’s being put on it? Then what am I even doing this for? Is this even possible? There’s no way that I’m going to be able to make a living off of this.” It’s heartbreaking to see that.

Because if we’re trying to create a more equitable landscape where different types of stories are being told, and different types of people are telling them, we can’t have people dropping out of the race already. You get this entrenched monochromatic nature, wherein all these structural biases and prejudices and inequities of the industry take root and really, really, really calcify. And if we are serious about increasing the diversity of the types of stories that are told across American publishing in its entirety, we have to be serious about this too.

This is also very telling because you hear a lot of authors who are like, “Look, don’t quit your day job. Don’t quit your day job. Don’t quit your day job.” And if you’re aspiring, you may take that with a grain of salt  cause you might be like, “I don’t know, my idea is going to be the next Hunger Games. Or the next Twilight. I’m gonna be able to make a living wage!” And, “Oh, I’m not going to blow it all.” Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But now when we say, “Don’t quit your day job. Don’t quit your day job. Don’t quit your day job.” We have data to point to, to be like, “Look this is why you shouldn’t quit your day job.”

This is really just about creating a more equitable landscape for the future, right? For those on the come-up, for those that are learning and who are perfecting their craft, and who are really excited about the stories that they have to tell, please hold onto that. We need that. You are not just important, you’re necessary. We’re trying to do all this for you. If there’s anything, we’re trying to bring about a world, or at least a world as it exists in the American publishing ecosystem, that when a company says Black Lives Matter, they mean it.

So please, keep up the good fight.

Sarah Enni: This is amazing. I hope everyone contributes if they can, or if they feel comfortable doing so. And I look forward to seeing all these bar charts and pie graphs and all my favorite things. And I so appreciate you taking the time to explain this and to get into this with me. And for doing this really, really incredible work. Thank you so much Tochi.

Tochi Onyebuchi:  Oh yeah, no, this was a pleasure and an honor, Sarah. It’s been a wild couple of days. I don’t think any of us expected this to take off the way that it has. But it just goes to show that this conversation is long overdue. Or at least it’s migration from the shadows into the light has been a long time coming. I think it’s very necessary to show that there was intention behind this, this wasn’t just a haphazard thing. And we’re not trying to just go about stoking outrage here, we’re trying to bring about tangible, meaningful change.

So I thank you for sitting down with me and letting me chat with you about this and about publishing in general. So, thank you.

Sarah Enni:  Advances are a very complicated subject. And obviously, there’s a lot more to say about them.

Jenn de Leon: He’s like, “You know, this is a family decision. What you work on next.” And that was a real cold awakening like, “What?” I’ve always worked on what I wanted to work on. I’ve always written what I wanted to write. And now, suddenly, it’s my quote unquote career, or it’s a financial decision.

Sarah Enni: We’re gonna get into it even more next time on Track Changes.

You can find Jennifer de Leon at jenniferdeleonauthor.com; Courtney Maum at courtneymaum.com; Sarah Burnes and Seth Fishman both at thegernertco.com; Holly Root at rootliterary.com; and Tochi Onyebuchi at tochionybuchi.com.

Follow me @SarahEnni on Twitter, Instagram, and everywhere. Follow @FirstDraftPod on Twitter and Instagram, and head to FirstDraftPod.com/TrackChanges for more information and updates on this series. As with all episodes of Track Changes, I gathered way more information than I could fit into this episode, and I’ll be sharing the rest in the Track Changes newsletter. A subscription service that for $5 a month will get you in-depth information about publishing every Thursday. Try the newsletter for free for 30 days by signing up @FirstDraftPod.com/TrackChanges.

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Track Changes is produced by me, Sarah Enni, and Hayley Hershman. Zan Romanoff is our story editor. The theme music is by Dan Bailey, and the logo was designed by Collin Keith.