America’s most popular authors often command eye-popping advances, the up-front money publishers pay you when you sign a book contract. But not everyone is James Patterson, who reportedly received $150 million in a seven-book deal. And many of the biggest stars in publishing scraped by for years before they could stop worrying about paying the rent.
Chuck Palahniuk received only a $7,000 advance for Fight Club, a novel that made him famous. Barbara Kingsolver, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead, received a million-dollar payout for her Poisonwood Bible, but once was barely keeping together financially. And Jeff Kinney, the cartoonist whose Diary of a Wimpy Kid brought him global fame? He had to hand-sell the book to a publisher at a comic-book convention and received a modest four-figure advance for it.
How much could you expect to get if you sold a book to a mainstream publisher? You may find clues in my new story at @Medium, “How Much Do Publishers Pay You for a Fiction or Nonfiction Book?,” which lists the advances received by 10 authors and how they earned them. That story also has a link to an article I wrote last year that lists the up-front money paid to more than 60 others.
One-Minute Book Reviews 