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Friday, January 28
The Romance of Money
Karen Fox's thorough survey of advances & standard royalty percentages on the part of romance publishers has been online for quite some time, but I just discovered it today (thanks to Southern Comfort: Diary of a Hype Hag). While young, debuting literary writers regularly take home outsized advances (as the Grumpy Old Bookman phrased it, "Sensible industries boast about how much income is generated by their product; publishers boast about how much they've paid for it."), the romance genre, judging by Fox's information, takes a very cautious approach to untested talent. Some examples from her list:
Dutton/Signet/NAL (single title)(Also noted: my escape-hatch plan of misusing my MFA to write a "genre" novel is the economic equivalent of flying into the sky with a parachute made of lead.).
Average advance (first book): $7,500
Average advance (subsequent books): $36,000
Advance range: $7,500 - $85,000
Standard royalty percentage: 8%
Average earn-out: n/a
Genesis
Average advance (first book): $650
Average advance (subsequent books): $2,000
Advance range: $500 - $2,500
Standard royalty percentage: 6% "of invoice"
Average earn-out: n/a
Harlequin Intrigue
Average advance (first book): $4,000
Average advance (subsequent books): $6,000
Advance range: $3,500 - $7,000
Standard royalty percentage: 6%
Average earn-out: $17,000
Range: $11,000 - $18,000
Po Bronson on Writing
I always assumed writing amounted to a slow, torturous, breakdown of a writer's native syntax and vocabulary, followed by a blind and fearful reconstruction ... But, given Po Bronson's very different definition, I'm forced to either accept there's many kinds of 'writing,' or that whatever Po Bronson is doing doesn't count.
From Bronson's "About Me" page (emphases, my own):
From Bronson's "About Me" page (emphases, my own):
My Basic Philosophy
(as it comes to writing)
I studied cultural economics and studio art in college. Cultural economics is the study of the interplay between capitalism and local culture, their influence on each other - Japanese keiretsu, Yugoslavian worker-controlled firms, Israeli kibbutzes, Basque cooperatives. I was expected to write an honors thesis, a hefty piece of research, 50+ pages minimum. Most people found this to be a ruinous chore; completing the task was rare. I wrote mine, then had another idea, and wrote a second, then a third, and a fourth. Four honors theses! Stanford had never seen anything like it. That was the first time it occurred to me, "maybe it's not economics that I like - maybe it's writing."
Doyle's Tsunami Deferred
While Bloomsbury tracks down sponsors for its tsunami aid book, New Beginnings (see a full list of contributors here), Century announces the indefinite postponement of Richard Doyle's novel, Tsunami.
The Telegraph, not quite so approbatory as The Elegant Variation, comments,
Bloomsbury's Tsunami Fund blog
Canada's Raincoast Books joins effort
The Telegraph, not quite so approbatory as The Elegant Variation, comments,
It is odd how natural disasters provoke such super-sensitivity in some sections of the media. Cancer, for example, kills far more people every year yet there is never any shortage of books or broadcasts on the subject. The bereaved are simply expected to look the other way. In the meantime, it is a sure bet that this time next year there will be an avalanche of books about the Indian Ocean tsunami ranging from fictional reconstructions to the accounts of survivors.Further Reading:
Scrapbook
- The Guardian excerpts Kafka on the Shore.
- mediabistro.com posts pics from Saturday night's NBCC shindig.
- Teachout reviews "Little Women: The Musical" in the WSJ (sub. req'd).
- My deepest fear, expressed: "The Key To Success? Responsibility."
First-Person, Story Prize
Attending the Story Prize announcement ceremony at SymphonySpace, Beatrice's Ron ran into NBA winner Lily Tuck,
who won for her novel The News From Paraguay. When she won, she remarked that she'd never actually been to Paraguay, and the government apparently got wind of this, because she's about to be flown over as a guest of the state.(But if Paraguay's government had consulted Tuck's acceptance speech, they would have seen that the full quote runs, "I have never been to Paraguay nor do I intend to go.")
Because much more than a book's content is prone to unoriginality. Episode 2: Solid Colors, Icons:
First row: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Bloomsbury), How We Are Hungry (McSweeney's). Second row: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Hyperion), A Complicated Kindness (Counterpoint Press). Third row: Monumental Propaganda (Knopf), When the Messanger is Hot: Stories (Back Bay Books). Fourth row: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage), Seneca Epistles 1-65 (Harvard University Press). Fifth row: The Elephant Vanishes (Vintage), The Vintage Book of Amnesia (Vintage).
Update: And how could I have forgotten Clarke's red & white dust jackets and Ian McEwan's upcoming Saturday?:
[See Episode One]
The First Word On the Book Publishing Industry
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