[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

You misunderstand the argument. Mr. Shatzkin is talking about the Great Nonfiction Book, Not the Great American Novel. Some books can't be written without considerable expenditure of resources-resources that are paid for by the publisher's advance.

Good premise. Name some examples: great nonfic books that only got written because of advances large enough for the author to live off them to do the necessary research.

Who are the amazing nonfic authors with the six-figure advances? Which nonfic books get TV commercials? (Besides Dianetics. Which kinda doesn't count.)

I'm not saying there aren't any, but nothing comes to mind right off.

It's another to do a book on the rise of China as an industrial power, the influence of corporate money in the US political system, or the impact of eBooks on the book industry worldwide. For this, you need investigation in the field, interviews, and travel expenses.

If that's true, why don't nonfic books cost substantially more than fiction books? Why does 40-year-old science fiction cost as much as nonfic released today?

Bottom-line, whether some books are written or not will depend on whether publishers will be able to fund the writing of the books through advances. And the less money publishers have , the more reluctant they will be to risk it on long shots like "Seabiscuit "

If they think "Seabiscuit" was a long shot, they weren't doing their market research properly. Knowing what will & won't sell is a big part of being a competent production company.

BPH assumptions that any new author is mid-list at best, and that future contracts should be based entirely on how well the last book sold, is part of the problem. We don't need more economic support for that system. It results in promising series being shut down because they didn't catch on fast enough (sometimes, because of publisher & distributor error) and would-be bestsellers languishing because publishers didn't print enough copies.