How big of an advance will a publisher give your book?

Let's take a look at what really goes on in the acquisitions room...

I’ve been a developmental editor for a major book packager for about two years now. But I’ve been a traditionally published author since 2011, and my advances have all ranged from $8,000 to $25,000 per book.

That isn’t a complaint! On the contrary, I’m very grateful. But I’m also a regular lurker on Publisher’s Marketplace, and I see deals for six or even seven figures regularly. So when it comes to the topic of BIG book advances like that, I’m pretty biased.

Which is why I asked a friend of mine who works in the industry to pull back the curtain on the whole acquisitions process. This friend has worked at a few houses in sales and marketing and is currently at one of the Big Five at an imprint for adult fiction. For the sake of this post, let’s call my friend Andrew. I’d like to share some of his insights about sales, marketing, and publicity in traditional publishing.

A quick disclaimer: Andrew really emphasized that every imprint is different in terms of ethos, practices, and budgets. Also, things change quickly; there’s a lot of turnover and staffing is tight. One or two positions changing over can really change the character and circumstances of an imprint. So just try to keep that fluidity in mind. 

Sales vs marketing vs publicity

I sent Andrew a bunch of questions via email and he responded, but after reading through everything, I realized I had to start off our chat by asking a really embarrassing question. While I know the difference between the words sales and marketing and publicity, I didn’t fully understand the function of each of these three departments within a publishing house, so that's where we started.

Publicity

Publicists work on getting books earned media, meaning publicity gained through anything that isn’t paid media advertising: reviews, mentions of books online or IRL, podcasts, YouTube or TikTok videos, social media, events like book festivals and conferences. The publicity department sets all of that up.

Marketing

The marketing department deals with paid media, advertising and sales promos. They (not always but often) work with the sales department. Andrew pointed out that marketing has changed a ton in the industry; when he first started out, the department was responsible for creating the print catalogs of all the books a house had coming out that season.

He said in his first job, he spent most of his time cropping author photos for the catalog—in his words, it was “yearbook staff.” Now those catalogs don’t exist anymore, because digital marketing changed everything. So today, his job is about paid advertising: talking to sales, and taking care of how every book looks on the internet, including Goodreads, Amazon, and other retailer sites.  

Sales

The sales department are those workers going to retailers and talking to buyers representing Amazon, B&N, indies, etc. Their job is pitching the list of upcoming books so the buyers can decide which ones they’re going to stock on the shelves. 

So if you want to think of it in levels, a book starts in editorial, moves to managing ed (which includes copyediting and production), then marketing and publicity work side-by-side, with marketing liaising with sales, and then the book moves onto the sales departing, then it’s off to the races, getting on the shelves at those retailers. 

But of course, before all that happens, a book has to go through acquisitions. This varies from imprint to imprint but most do try to get at least a few folks from all of these teams in on the acquisitions process. This is where the decision is made whether or not to acquire the book—and how much the advance is going to be. It is a process shrouded in mystery. Let’s take a look in the room where it happens.

What really goes on in acquisitions?

What’s the secret formula, the magic process, by which acquisitions teams arrive at a figure for an advance? It depends on the house, on the imprint, on which people are in the room, on the season, on literally a hundred different factors that have pretty much nothing to do with the author or their book and its quality or even really its salability. 

A senior editor will have more clout and have more success asking for more money. An associate editor might face an uphill battle getting the team on board with a big advance.

The author’s agent will sometimes say “I’m anticipating this specific dollar amount” to give the house an arbitrary starting point. 

These meetings can be huge and formal or small and informal. They’re pretty high stress for editors because they’re trying to convince whoever happens to be in the room why they should 1. Make an offer 2. Make it a BIG offer. 

In some cases, it’s easy enough for editors to make their point. Obviously if the author already has a few successful books and a devoted following, that’s a no brainer. If the book fits with some current trend, that might be another easy win. And if the author has some sort of celebrity status, there you go. 

In pretty much all other cases, though, the editor just loves the book, loves the author, and thinks it will sell well. In other words, editors go into these meetings and, under a time crunch and a ton of pressure, have to explain a gut feeling to their colleagues. Have you ever tried to explain a gut feeling? It’s not easy.

Sometimes they say something objectively dumb or even terrible to justify their stance and make everyone else feel their gut feeling and say “yes! You’re right! You SHOULD get a hundred thousand more dollars for that offer!” 

An example Andrew gave that editors throw out frequently: “the author is mediagenic.”

Mediagenic being code for ‘good-looking.’

Yuck.

I don’t need to get into all the reasons why this is awful. But I will add that Andrew said “mediagenic” was something he heard a lot earlier on in his career, and that that kind of language and way of thinking has been improving. I want to give credit where it’s due. Traditional publishing drags its feet on change but it does move forward, slowly.

This should go without saying, but I’ll be explicit: an author’s looks has zero bearing on whether or not they can write a great book and find a readership.

Now if you’re wondering... Did Andrew and I talk about #publishingpaidme? Oh yes. We did. And if you’re thinking wow, could these acquisitions BE more awkward? Oh yes. They could. 

Andrew said that there is a heartening desire within most imprints to publish more authors of color. HOWEVER. Sitting at a boardroom table and listening to a bunch of white editors figure out how to talk about the issue is...I believe the word he used was “astounding.” 

Now again, baby steps but this is an improvement from the days when an author of color’s book was brought to acquisitions and one or two team members would reject it with a phrase like “oh they're not mediagenic” which was, in that context, basically code for “I'm racist.” So yes, it is very positive thing overall that the tides have turned here.

But do we ever have a long way to go. Andrew said there are clearly editors who are making an effort to read more diversely and bring a wider variety of stories to the table and it's great, because the list is being reshaped to be more reflective of our communities and our world. But other editors are doing it for the virtue cookies, or because they’re treating it as a ‘trend,’ and again, this shouldn’t have to be said but the existence of people of various races, religions, and orientations is not a trend, it is simply the reality of the world we live in.

Andrew also said that he gets frustrated when editors talk about an author's amazing social media presence as a way of justifying their gut feeling because often editors don't understand what that means. They might say “this potential author has 200,000 followers on TikTok” but they don't know if those are even real people, they don't know how engaged they are, and as we all know, just because people are happy to follow you online and watch your Insta reel (for free) doesn't mean they're going to want to spend $25 on a hardcover book with your name on it.

So wait…we DON’T have to get on BookTok?! Andrew had a lot of thoughts about that too! This is part one of three, so stay tuned next Monday for honest thoughts about social media for authors from a Big Five marketing director.

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The posts I publish here will remain free. But I have a series called Ask the Editor, which will publish every Friday. The short pitch: Dear Abby for writers.

The longer pitch: paid subscribers ($5/month or $50/year, cancel anytime) will receive a link to a form where they can submit pretty much anything within a two page limit. Things like…

• Queries

• Synopses

• Pages from their novel

• Questions about writing or traditional publishing

• A current problem or situation in their writing journey (ie: trying to decide if an agent is a schmagent, disagreeing with beta feedback, etc)

• A rant about this whole “trying to get published” endeavor to a sympathetic ear

Every Friday, I’ll respond to/critique as many submissions as I can and publish them together in one post. Because they’ll be behind a paywall, there’s some privacy—your query, pages, or rant about that one really horrible rejection won’t be online for editors to discover when they Google you.

That’s it! I hope to see you over there. :)

Michelle