Quote:
Originally Posted by avantman42
My intention was to engage in honest argument. I pointed out to Steve that I thought he'd made a mistake. Since you had only implied, rather than outright stated, that advances are high enough to remove worries about paying bills, I also said that I might have mis-read your post. Perhaps you'd like to let us both know whether I had mis-read you?
As for the part about advances, I'm simply trying to find some evidence one way or the other. Note that I'm asking about non-fiction advances specifically, not fiction. Steve said "a lot of non-fiction writing is incompatible with having a continuous day job due to need to spend months traveling to research sites." I don't disagree with that, and I've seen people (including Steve, I think) state that non-fiction advances pay for an author's expenses while they research and write the book. I'm sure that was true in the past, but since fiction advances are smaller than they used to be, it may be that non-fiction advances are too. I don't know if they are or not, but I'd like to find out.
Thanks for the link, but the only mention of non-fiction advances seems to be this sentence: "Publishers pay authors advances that range from as little as $1,000 to amounts in the high six figures for fiction and non-fiction." Frankly, that doesn't tell me much.
That article doesn't mention how much authors get paid as advances at all, so I don't see how it's relevant to my question.
I agree. However, the article that gave that figure also says that publishers typically pay a third or a half in advance, so after the agent's 15% cut, the professor would have $22,666.66 or $34,000 for the summer. That'd be plenty for me, but I'm not a professor 
All that still doesn't answer the question of what the current average advance is. $80,000 was apparently the average in 2012. That was three years ago. Has it increased? Decreased? Stayed the same? |
Well, _I_ could pay the bills on 80K and I don't live particularly frugally, so yes I think that one can pay the bills on 80K. As far as what the average advance is now, well I haven't seen any good data. The best swipe at it that I've seen is this
http://agenthunter.co.uk/blog/363/
Which put's it at 20K, considerably less that 80K. But that's from a self selecting set of respondents. Advances have always been based on how many books the publisher thinks they will sale rather than the author's need, so I'm sure advances is all over the place. I suppose that one can look at the data that Scalzi posted on Lock In, then compare it to the contract that he signed (both links are elsewhere in this thread) and try to calculate the advance per title.
As far as non fiction verse fiction, I would say that I have no idea.
Frankly, my personal take on advances is that an advance is better than a kick in the tail. It's history dates back to the days when most people lived far more frugally than they do today. To an extent, I think you are trying to over analysis it. If the point is what's better, getting an advance and not getting an advance, then I think getting an advance is obviously better. If the question is can a specific author make more money as an indie or with a traditional publisher, then I would guess (and the key word is guess since there are so many variables) that it really depends on the author and how good he or she is at self promotion, how disciplined they are and how much hand holding they require to produce the book that hits the stores.