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Can't Live without 'Em
by D. J. Herda
The other day, my agent was talking to a client whose agent knew a client of another agent who had another client who just happened to be me, before he died. I mean the agent, not me. Go figure.
Anyway, within the conversation being held by these two living agents, the topic of literary advances came up, and both agents said that they had recently seen publishers' advances going down across the board--most probably as a direct result of the economic climate in which we presently find ourselves through no fault of the current administration. My agent told me all of this a couple days later (the one I have now, not the dead one), and I started reflecting upon advances and what an archaic notion they are.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking them. Without advances, writers wouldn't be able to write. I, for one, wouldn't be able to survive for more than a week-and-a-half if it weren't for advances. But the sole purpose for offering advances originally was to provide the writer with living expenses while he toiled away at completing his book. After all, even struggling artists must buy new shoes.
That got me to thinking about something. Publishers pay writers advances so that they can complete their books prior to publication, but they also pay writers advances when they have already completed their books, making them equal opportunity advance-payers.
I sold a book a few months ago, for example, and by the time I received my advance check from the publisher, the book was already complete and winging its way east.
I guess publishers pay advances even to writers who have already completed their manuscripts because, even though the writer has finished the book and can go out and drum up more business in order to earn more money by writing another book until the first book clears the publishing hurdles and begins generating royalties, there's a period of time--I call it the Indeterminate Lamentable Lag time, or ILL--during which the writer is screwed. He's an economic sitting duck, just awaiting the executioner's call.
That's because of another peculiarity in publishing called the publisher's "list."
A publisher's list is a group of books scheduled to be released for sale all at the same time--usually either in spring (the spring list) or in fall (the fall list...clever, no?). If an author completes his book in fall of 2009 and turns it over to the publisher, the publisher is probably going to slot it for release not on its next available list in spring of 2010, which would seem like the most logical thing to do, but in fall of 2010 or even in spring of 2011. The reason for this is that the publisher's next list (and possibly the one after that) is already put to bed. Introducing a new book to the mix would only add confusion to the publishing process, and lord knows there's enough of that out there already.
So the publisher pays a writer an advance, even if the writer has already finished his book, because the publisher knows that there's going to be several months to a year or more between the book's completion and its release for sale. And publishers hate to see writers whose books they have just signed to a contract die of malnutrition before they've had a chance to set them up for at least a couple of book signings at Barnes and Noble. It's only fair.
I guess I get all that, and it all makes sense, in a convoluted sort of way. Except that, in thinking back over all the books I've sold and all the advances I've received, it seems to me that the largest advances I got were for books that I had already completed, and the smallest ones were for books that I had only begun to write.
Which brings me to the whole point of this commentary. Shouldn't advances be only for books that the author hasn't yet finished writing, and for those that he has, shouldn't they be called retreats?
Think about it.
And I…am D. J. Herda.
# # #
D. J. Herda is President of the American Society of
Authors and Writers (http://amsaw.org),
an organization made up of authors, writers, editors, publishers, agents,
directors, producers, and other media professionals who rely upon the printed
word in the creation of quality literature and entertainment. He is
a member of the Author's Guild, a former member of the American Society of
Journalists and Authors, and a former member of the National Press Club.
He has published more than 80 books and several hundred thousand articles,
short stories, columns, interviews, plays, and scripts. |
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