Blogger: Wendy Lawton
Location: Books & Such Central Valley Office, CA
First Published: February 10, 2009
Yesterday I wrote about book advances. I briefly touched on the issue of numbers and how they can affect advances. Today we’ll delve more deeply into an author’s book sales numbers. As agents, the one question we can always count on getting from a publisher as they review a new proposal is, “So. . . what kind of numbers does the author have?”
Some of you were dismayed by my addressing the crasser aspects of writing in yesterday’s blog. Things like advances vary according to author stature. We prefer to think about the art and ministry of writing but, by covering these business issues, I am not negating those. That is where the magic happens. And, of course, there is always that wonderful project that succeeds beyond our wildest dreams even when everything seems stacked against it. Those are the miracles in publishing that make this business a delight.
But the truth is this: publishing is a business. Yes, even Christian publishing. The publisher and the business team at each publishing house are called to be good stewards of the resources with which they’ve been entrusted. In order to take a risk on a brilliant book, they need to have a foundation of solid projects in the pipeline. So if these kinds of discussions depress you, I urge you to sit this one out. But for those of you who are fascinated by the business side of things, here goes.
As a writer, your numbers stay with you much like your school transcripts. This is one of the reasons your agent spends so much time chewing over every potential career move. Part of our job is to make sure each project is a success. But what constitutes a success? I’m afraid I have the same answer I gave yesterday to the question of advances. It depends.
At almost every writers’ conference someone raises his hand to ask, “So what would be considered good sales numbers for a book?” You’ll always see the editors looking around sheepishly before they begin back-peddling. Here’s the reason: the number is different for every project and for every publishing house. And those numbers are proprietary– editors don’t share them with each other and agents don’t share them from publisher to publisher.
I’ve heard freelance presenters at writers’ conferences say things like, “The average book sells only 1200 copies.” Huh? Those numbers are probably meant to set writers’ fears at ease, but they are meaningless. I always long to question the statistics. Do they take into consideration self-published books with a print run of 150 copies? Are personal family projects added into that number? Who knows?
Each publishing house has a different threshold for success. The bigger the house, the more books they expect to sell. The smaller houses, with a more modest overhead, can make a profit on a much smaller project. Comparing the two is apples to oranges. To analyze your success you can only compare your numbers to the projections your editor made when he acquired your book. The only problem is, you’ll never see that projection. So how’s anyone to know?
The rule of thumb is that your advance should roughly equal the royalty a book is projected to earn in the first year of publication. Let me repeat that. Your advance should roughly equal the royalty a book is projected to earn in the first year of publication. When a book exceeds that projection–earning back the advance in less than a year–that book is a success. We say your book “earned out” when you’ve earned back the whole advance and you begin to receive royalties. There are always exceptions to each rule, like the book that starts slow and hits the charts in its second or third year, but if you earn out before the first year, you can probably breathe a little easier.
And comparisons don’t work. Say you sold 5000 copies in the first year against an advance of $2000.00. That book may be a great success to your small publisher, while another book may have sold 40,000 copies against an advance of $100,000.00 and be a huge disappointment to a major house.
When an editor asks us about your numbers, it’s up to us, as agents, to put it in context for them. We often do it by giving the number but adding how many months it took to “earn out,” saying something like, “the book sold 5,000 copies but we were happy that it went to second printing in four months, earning out the advance within the first few weeks.”
Don’t you wish it were easier? But hopefully this will give you some tools to analyze how you’re doing against expectations for your book. It can be confusing, so please feel free to use the comments section to ask your questions. And tune in Thursday when we’ll talk about what happens when we have less-than-stellar numbers in our publishing history, and what we can do to redeem them.
Thanks for telling the truth in love, Wendy! While I don’t feel like turning cartwheels, I learned what I need to know about the publishing process.
Wow. Never knew this side of things.
Thanks. Great post.
Hi Wendy,
Given the tough economic climate, are new authors being picked up by publishers at all? If a few new authors are emerging, have you found some who are willing to not take an advance in order to be more flexible and attractive to publishers?
Yes, Sharon– new authors are being contracted all the time. Debut authors offer the chance for an editor to discover the next exciting new talent. It’s not easy now since the number of slots are shrinking, but it’s never been easy no matter what anyone says.
I think it’s easier to get a contract for a new author than an author who has been published a number of times with ho-hum results. (But we’re talking about that on Thursday.)
And it’s not about using the advance (or lack thereof) as a bargaining tool. It’s important for publishers to pay an advance– to be invested in a book. We just need to make sure the advance is reasonable and the project will be a success.
All of this is about building a career. It can be a wake-up call to those whose only goal is to sell a book. That’s just step one and opens the door to another level of potential pitfalls.
Good thing God is in control!
Thanks for the straight talk Wendy. I had to learn all that stuff the long way by figuring it out along the way. It is complicated, isn’t it?
All of my books ‘earned out’ within the first few months, but due to lots of things (a book released at the same time with the same title that got placed in stores that meant to order mine, being orphaned in the middle of a project due to editorial changes and change in priorities, etc), my number show progressive declines even though they weren’t actually ‘losing’ books. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s entry…part of why I’ve been stalled recently is not knowing what to do with those old numbers when it seems to be such a numbers game.
Very informative, Wendy. I appreciate all the things I’m learning on this Books & Such blog. Excellent.
Okay. So how do I know my sales numbers? What does that figure start popping up? In my case, my book was contracted for release in Mar 2009. It was released in UK & overseas 6 mo early, in Oct 2008. It was released in the US in Jan 09. So, I got behind the publicity ball… I guess I’m confused about my “first year” and when it began… and how to find my sales figures.
Yeah. I’m a rookie. I’m loving the blog!
Thanks
Bill
You’ll get your numbers off your royalty statements. You may hear some preliminary numbers from your editor but you have to keep in mind those are subject to change since books can be returned. Check with your wonderful agent about applying our rule of thumb since you had your British release before your North American release. But roughly you’ll want to earn out by October I’d think but of course you’ll have grace because of the staggered release.
You sure seem to be having fun promoting it, Bill. http://www.innermess.com/ Love the trailer.
Yeah – I LOVE this kinda stuff. Learned a TON here today (hope I’ll get to use it soon LOL).
Wendy,
My head is spinning. I’m trying to absorb the information from yesterday and today’s posts as it whirls around me. I remember feeling this way when I first became a Christian…it all sounded so unfamiliar..foreign…like being in a different world.
I’m sure as I continue the writing journey I’ll become accustomed to this terminology and it’s universe.
I am choosing one statement to ponder. “But the truth is this: publishing is a business. Yes, even Christian publishing.” It is an awesome responsibility to be a publisher or an agent. But you have planted the idea firmly in my mind of the formidable responsibility of an author to write well and to sell well. I guess, really for the first time, I have a greater understanding of why everyone is concerned about a potential author’s “platform.”
Well, “Hope springs eternal…..” (Alexander Pope)….and I write on with the hope of being published and of sales that more than meet the criteria.
Love this blog…very enlightening.
I’ve heard somewhere that CBA numbers aren’t entirely too reliable due to a number of factors; if that is true, how does an agent handle that when asked by a potential publisher about the sales history of the author?
Again, I personally would not want to jump into all of this without an agent. Thank you for explaining more to us, Wendy. I’m not at this point in my writing career yet, but you have already cleared away some confusion. Thank you.
What an insightful post. I think we are all searching for hard numbers. We want to know what to expect. I appreciate you providing this information.
This was really interesting. I’d heard terms that you needed to sell 10,000 copies to be a success. Now that I see the time frame to sell through the advance, it makes much more sense.
Does a publisher ask for platform numbers on fiction debut authors?
Thanks so much for pulling back the curtain on these things.
Wendy, thanks for the post. I love learning all about the business side of things. I crave understanding of how it all works, and what I can or should expect. I can’t tell you how much I have learned reading this blog the last few months. To me, it’s knowledge that’s priceless. 🙂
Great information.
I remember asking an editor at the recent Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference the apparently tabu question: How many copies would need to be sold for you to consider this book a success? At the time I thought it was a fair question for a writer to ask a prospective publisher. But you should have seen the dance moves it provoked. For us Curious Georges it makes the Lock Box all the more intriguing.
Larry, I’m guessing what you heard was that the bestseller lists in CBA are not too reliable as a gauge of how a writer is doing. this is true because there are so few stores that report to the lists and big boxes like Walmart and Costco don’t report. Some of that may be changing as we hear that some of the big chains are considering reporting sales.
But we have the hard and fast sales data from royalty reports and that’s what we go by. We never use anecdotal evidence like “my editor told me the first run was 25,000 books and it’s going to a second printing, so it must mean. . . .” That’s always unreliable but I’ve never heard of a verified case of a CBA publisher underreporting sales on royalty statements. By and large this is an honorable business and accounting is accounting– plain and simple.
Melissa, “Platform” numbers– meaning the number of people you speak to in a year, the number on your mailing list, etc– are not important for a debut novelist. You are all about potential and it’s all about the book. You are coming into this with no baggage. We do find editors are very interested in the size and vigor of your social network– this gives them an idea how invested you are in this industry and how likely you might be to connect with other writers (for blurbs and influence) and with readers.
It’s different for published fiction writers. They do want to see how you are growing your reader base and building your audience.
And entirely different for nonfiction writers. Publishers are hoping you have a vigorous following for the very message you are presenting in your book. their dream is to sign the go-to person for that subject.
Michael, you realize how hard it is for editors to get a question like that when they are sitting on a panel with their competition, so to speak. If they were to say, “We’d be thrilled if we could sell 6,000 books in the first year,” the other editors from big houses would drop their jaws and it would diminish that first publisher in the others’ eyes.
Those editors, by and large, don’t know how their house fares in comparison to other houses. It’s all proprietary information. And they are not allowed to share that information.
Agents are the ones who know the relative size of the houses and what the sales look like house to house. We get royalty statements from all the different houses. And we are very careful never to divulge that information because confidentiality is part of the ethical responsibility we have to the publishers which whom we work.
You just need to use the “earning out” rule of thumb and talk with your agent. When you ink the deal she’ll be able to let you know what you need to sell to be considered a success.
Great posts and Bill’s trailer is hysterical.