01-22-2015, 04:15 AM | #1 | |
Wizard
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Non-fiction advances
Recently, I saw this on the Authors Guild blog:
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Googling has been some help, but I'm hoping to find more. I've found a 2012 article that says "I saw an article in a trade journal recently that reported that the average advance for a nonfiction book was less than $80,000." and a 2011 survey of 105 authors, of which 30% wrote non-fiction, which seems to agree with the 2012 article. Neither of these are great sources, though - one refers to an unnamed other source, the other is based on a very small sample. Both are a few years old. Does anyone have any solid information on what sort of advances are paid for non-fiction books nowadays? |
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01-22-2015, 07:43 AM | #2 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Given that not many non fiction books make $80,000, that seems about right to me. Many writers of non fiction books have day jobs, for example, college professors or journalist, that allows them to write. Steven Levitt (Freakonomics) is a college professor, Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist.
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01-22-2015, 08:13 AM | #3 |
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My understanding is that most authors of all types have a day job to support themselves financially.
What Franklin Foer said (and I quoted) is that publishers are able to pay non-fiction authors a large enough advance for the author to spend time and money researching the book. It also implies that those authors don't need to have a day job during the period that they are writing and researching. I've heard that argument put forward before in defence of publishers. I'm just trying to work out whether or not it's a valid argument. |
01-22-2015, 11:45 AM | #4 | |
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Next absurd strawman step to the fore. |
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01-22-2015, 12:07 PM | #5 |
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Kickstarter is an obvious alternative, though I can see why some authors would rather deal with publishers, if only because they know the publishers and don't know Kickstarter.
Your point raises an interesting question, though. Has anyone successfully crowd-funded a non-fiction book? |
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01-22-2015, 03:24 PM | #6 | |
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Yes. And if someone were to do a proper biography of Julie London I would be in. Assuming it was covering her acting career, her singing career, her marriage with Jack Webb, the active social life she and Bobby Troupe had for many years, her kids, whole enchilada basically. So far the offerings about her life have been pretty lame. There are many books for which there is a market waiting for a dedicated author. |
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01-23-2015, 05:29 AM | #7 | |
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Re-reading my first post, I may not have been clear about what I was wanting to find. Does anyone have evidence that publishers pay non-fiction authors enough of an advance to enable the author to research and write the book without needing a day job? |
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01-23-2015, 06:33 AM | #8 |
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As far as I can tell kickstart and other crowd sourcing projects are one of those ideas that sounds great, but rarely works. It has the same basic issue as the tragedy of the commons in economics. Basically, everyone assumes someone else is going to pay for it. I've seen kickstart project work where the originator (or someone supporting him or her) is very aggressive in pushing it, but that's pretty rare. Just think, how many people are going to have to kick to raise $80K?
I suspect that if it gets to the point where publishers are no longer able to afford advances for non fiction, then we were see more use of grants and patrons, kind of how the arts were paid for during the Renaissance. |
01-24-2015, 04:26 PM | #9 | ||
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^1: More than one successfully crowd-funded project was sunk, because the planners did not account for taxes owed on the revenue obtained by crowd-funding. Other successfully funded ventures were almost sunk, becuase of unexpected costs, that were a direct result of using crowdfunding. ^2: In looking at a number of projects on KickStarter, I noticed that:
^3: The rational here, is that those who oppose the project, do so, purely because their objections have been neither acknowledged, nor addressed. Address those issues, and the oponents will support your project; ^4: I'm looking specifically at books that people sought crowd-funding for:
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01-24-2015, 10:30 PM | #10 | ||||
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Fiat_Lux sounds reasonable to me.
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Maybe the distinction shouldn't be between fiction and nonfiction, but between works of imagination, and books that require lots of research which includes traveling. To me, it's not just a question of whether kickstarter reported and researched nonfiction books exist, but if a good argument can be made that they are among the best on the topic. Quote:
We've already seen several examples where newspapers and magazines have become a rich man's plaything. This may be one: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-d...e-new-republic If I'm right that kickstarter in particular, and self-publishing in general, isn't working for producing great research-and-reporting-intensive nonfiction, this means advance-paying publishers will remain strong there. |
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01-26-2015, 09:41 PM | #11 | ||
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01-26-2015, 10:32 PM | #12 |
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Looking back to the original post, I don't think this thread has advanced us any further whatsoever. We continue to operate in an almost complete factual background. Personally, I am quite skeptical about the role of Big Publishers as Patrons of Non-Fiction. I suspect this claim might be a little like saying I support charities whilst giving $50 annually to Barnardo's. I am open to being convinced otherwise by hard facts and figures, but am not holding my breath.
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01-27-2015, 02:48 AM | #13 |
Wizard
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Unfortunately, I agree. The Kickstarter tangent was interesting, but there has been very little (if any) evidence presented to either support or refute the claim that was presented in my original post.
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advance, non-fiction |
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