Sunday, August 06, 2006

The Truth Behind The Advance

Do you ever want to whine about lousy advances from publishing houses? Are you often angry because they're so danged 'picky' about what they accept? Does it make you want to stomp your feet that big publishing corporations make gazillion dollars while you, the poor writer, survives on bread, water, and if you're lucky tuna fish?

I stumbled on a blog kept by an editor for Tor. Her blog Demystifying Publishing is wonderful, but this article that explains exactly what accounts for P&L (profit/loss) on a novel is just mind-boggling. For an enlightening read, click here for "P&L: or how books make, or don't make money". This is actually just part 1 of a 4 part series. The entire thing is fantastic, but if you even just read part one, I think you'll come away with a much better appreciation of that rejection letter, or itty bitty advance.

8 comments:

Bernita said...

Erm..."no" to your first questions ( rhetorical I know) but it is amazing how many people don't seem to understand that publishing is a business or comprehend the costs publishers assume on a gamble.

Tami P said...

Oh, you would be the last person in the world I'd think would answer 'yes' to any of the questions involved. I can't even say it amazes me how many people would though. There was a time...

Anonymous said...

Fascinating!!

Shesawriter said...

I remember reading that post and it gave me a headache. My eyes started crossing and I started feeling faint. LOL!

Tami P said...

lol, Tanya. It does make ones eyes cross, doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

How can we keep up with page 2?

Tami P said...

Hi Jose, did you mean how do you get to page 2? If so, it would help if the link on the first page worked, wouldn't it? LOL

I went to the actual blog, and pulled up the second page from there... make a note, it was labeled as a 4 part series at first, but I think that's all the pages of comments added. It only has two... so don't try to find more pages after this one.

Here's the hard link to the second page of the article:

http://alg.livejournal.com/89781.html#cutid1

Tami P said...

oh dang, the entire thing didn't go on. Trying again... here it is:
(take out any spaces that might appear in the bar once you copy it in there. I put one in hoping to make it show up in its entirety here.

http://alg.livejournal.com
/89781.html#cutid1