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Originally Posted by gweeks
From what I read it happens pretty often at the high end of advances. A quick search didn't find anyone talking about it and I don't have time right now to dig deaper. That sort of activity is a lot of the reason there is talk about the "advance" processs being broken right now in publishing.
Greg
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Shatzkin trots it out all the time.
Like here:
http://www.idealog.com/blog/publishe...them-that-way/
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The savviest agents for the biggest authors don’t negotiate contracts in the same way the rest of the world does. They figure out in concert with the publisher how many copies they think the book should sell (big authors with long track records are somewhat more predictable than the rest of the universe, which is one more reason their books are so desirable to the publishers) and get an advance that is equal to a startlingly high percentage of the revenue that sales level would produce.
The advance is not expected to earn out (and, believe me, with advances calculated this way, they almost never do). That means the royalty rates are irrelevant. So they can have their star authors sign the boilerplate contract, permitting the publisher to say — almost truthfully — that they don’t pay more than 15% of cover price royalty on print or more than 25% of net royalty on ebooks (among other things).
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The system is designed to favor established big name authors at the expense of newcomers. Not unlike professional baseball where major leaguers get paid a lifetime of income in one year and minor leaguer salaries often qualify them for welfare.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/baseba..._leaguers.html
Which explains both the lockstep support for the status quo by the big money types like Preston and Child and the declining submissions by newcomers in the ebook-heavy genres like romance and SF&F among others.
Shatzkin, being a tradpub advocate, has long been warning them that their toxic practices were driving authors to selfpub and Amazon and of the need to be more open about their actual costs instead of hiding them. He's worth reading if you can get past his readerless worldview.