Quote:
Originally Posted by mogui
Most book authors get an advance -- a flat sum of money and a promise of a royalty if the book earns income past that paid for in the advance payment. Most books never earn past the advance fee paid to the author. Thus the author is getting a one-time flat-fee payment. He will never see a royalty payment.
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That's the whole point. Most authors get an exceedingly small advance. If the initial print run doesn't sell through, the likelihood of additional printings or of selling the paperback rights go way down. If it
does sell through, there is not only a better chance of selling paperback rights, but also a
much better chance that the author's next book will get picked up at all. Publishers look at the business with a blind worship of the numbers. The better the numbers, the better the next deal will be.
I'm not talking about the seven-figure advances of the mega-sellers. Those are a completely different category, and the arcane mumbo jumbo that goes into calculating those deals is a horror story in itself. I'm talking about the midlist writers--the ones for whom every sale can make a difference. Those are the writers who are already getting a raw deal from the publisher. They don't need to get one from the readers as well.