Rollin' in dough

Tobias Buckell has conducted a survey to determine how much money new writers make on advances of their novels.

The typical advance for a first novel is $5000. The typical advance for later novels, after a typical number of 5-7 years and 5-7 books is $12,500. Having an agent at any point increases your advance. There is some slight correlation between number of books and number of years spent writing as represented in the 5-12.5 thousand dollar advance shift of an average of 5-7 years. Charting individual author's progressions, which I will not release to keep anonymity, reveals a large number of upward lines at varying degrees of steepness for advances, some downward slides.

Some authors noted that they'd gotten large advances in the 90s but were being paid less now.

That $5,000 figure for a first novel falls in line pretty much with what I've heard over the years. Unfortunately, that figure hasn't changed in the 15 years I've paid attention to it, and those in the business much longer than I may be able to tell if that's been the standard even longer. That $12,000 for ensuing novels isn't bad if writing is a sideline to the day job, but if you're trying to eke out a living, it pretty much sucks.

And if you publish genre-related non-fiction, you generally look at those advances and think "Damn! Those folks is rollin' in dough!"

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