Author advances are holding up amid cost pressures facing the industry with sums remaining competitive and the market for authors "buoyant", agents and publisher say. Read more
Everyone wants to write a book, or to say they have written a book. Publishing a book is still an honor, a point of pride-but like pretty much everything else, it's also dependent upon a capitalist business model. And the financial side of publishing can be opaque, unfair, and downright contradictory. Read more
Ah, book writing. For most people, it is not a viable (or at least not a reliable) source of income, but for the lucky and/or talented few, it can be pretty lucrative. Extremely lucrative, in some cases! Six-figure book deals used to be the gasp-worthy news in the literary world, but over the years, it's been upped to seven. But who exactly is getting paid?
For better or worse, writers and readers live in an age of the million-dollar book deal. The Big Five publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster) increasingly gamble on massive book advances in hopes that they might put out one of the biggest hits of the year. Read more
In 2012, before the success of Inside Amy Schumer and Trainwreck, Amy Schumer sold an essay collection to HarperCollins for $1 million. Over the next year or so, Schumer turned in a few essays, but the project ultimately didn't go far. The material was raw, so in 2013, New Yorker writer Patricia Marx was brought in for rewrites. Read more
"If a work is to be PoD/ultra short-run and/or ebook only, and the author is being paid only a minimal, or no, advance, in my view the comparison is not only with how those terms compare with a traditional contract, but also how they compare with the fact that an author can self-publish in such forms, at almost zero cost, perfectly well. Read more
The Authors Guild has outlined some of the "egregious terms" of current contract boilerplates it plans to address in its Fair Contract Initiative, first announced May 28 during BookExpo AmericaBookExpo America, commonly referred to within the book publishing industry as BEA. The largest annual book trade fair in the United States.
The median advance for traditionally published authors is "well under £6,600", according to early findings of a survey into authors' attitudes towards their publisher. The survey also found that bigger publishers pay more. Read more
The argument against Amazon seems to rest on the proposition that if trad-pubs aren't awarded excess returns, over and above the actual free-market value of their products, then there will be no money to pay authors to write "serious literature," irreparably harming our culture and society. Read more
The reality of a six figure advance is highlighted this week by the failure of Harper Collins to realise its investment in Kindle best-selling sensations Mark Edwards and Louise Voss. A lot of noise was made in 2011 as the Harper Collins joined in a desperate scrap to secure the writing talents of the duo. Read more
'Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world.
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Agents have predicted continued demand in 2023 for feel-good stories as well as a romance and ‘romantasy' boom thanks to TikTok but say there could be a shift this year towards darker, genre-busting and challenging books.
When I pitched One Woman's War: A Novel of the Real Miss Moneypenny in October 2020, I had no idea that Operation Mincemeat, a movie about the same subject matter, would be released in early 2022, just a few months before One Woman's War was due out.
In a sense, every detective novel is about the inside of someone's head. What immediately captures the reader at the beginning of a Sherlock Holmes story is the tick-tock of Holmes mind: what brilliance will he conjure next, what detail will he pull out of an ordinary scene, who is this guy?
Both Romance & Sagas and Sci-Fi & Fantasy had banner years, with Romance's £53m its best since 2012, the year of E L James and Fifty Shades, and Sci-Fi & Fantasy's £47m its highest since 2007. Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us was the overall bestseller of the year, with four other Hoover titles in the top 10. Read more
Mystery readers savor the hallmarks of their preferred subgenres of crime fiction. To meet their expectations, the savvy mystery author should choose their words wisely. Authors must deliver the expected violence level, the appropriate sleuth qualifications, the correct level of police involvement, a vibrant setting, a compelling whodunnit, and a satisfying resolution.
Everybody wants a good climax, especially when it comes to storytelling. That's why, today, we'll answer the question- what is a story climax? We'll also talk about the types of story climaxes, climaxes versus other story elements, look at some examples, and discuss how to write a compelling story climax. So, let's get started!
"Why isn't there more sex in your books?" I get this question a lot. In my DMs. In my email. In Zoom book club meetings, bookstore signings, and festival events. This, more than any other, seems to be the question my enthusiastic (and apparently thirsty) fans are burning to ask. Written inquiries are usually punctuated with fire emojis, or more commonly, a string of bright red chili peppers. Read more
I write dark fantasy stories for adults that explore survival after sexual trauma and war. My work focuses on the aftermath of sexual violence and the way my protagonists stubbornly live well after the unthinkable. There are no on-page depictions of SA in my work. Read more
I write a historical fiction series set in World War Two London. My protagonist is a Scotland Yard detective called Frank Merlin. I place great importance on being historically accurate in my books. I take the view that as I am attempting to transport my readers to a very different time and place, accuracy is a key element to doing that successfully. Read more
Booksellers report that more customers are switching to paperbacks as household budgets tighten, with agents and publishers also predicting a shift towards the cheaper format. Read more
‘I don’t believe in writers’ block. Plumbers don’t get plumbers’ block. Why should writing be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working.'