The Word Cloud

Hi there,

I've been offered a deal with a decent publisher for my first book, but it's a royalties-only contract.

Naturally, I'm pleased to have a potential deal but am disappointed that there's no advance on offer. I would be interested to hear from other writers here (and agents, publishers, etc) as to the pros and cons of such a contract.

Anything I should be wary of? Anything in particular to demand/hold out for?

Many thanks,

Firstly well done, great stuff.
I have no advice, other than to maybe drop a mail to the WW. I'm fairly sure they would give you some quick, free advice.
Nice one.

Thanks Ali, will try that now

The obvious disadvantage is that you won't get any money for ages.

The next one is that the publisher has a lot less money bound up in publishing you - only editorial, production, marketing, sales - so has less incentive to really push your work. That's the real reason that agents push for bigger advances: not just so the author can afford a holiday and the agent can afford another bottle of wine, but because the size of the advance is the publisher's vote of confidence in your work: an earnest of their good intent. The more money they've laid out on you, the more incentive they have to try to earn it back.

That said, times are tough: £30,000 is the new £100,000, and publishers which used to offer £3-5,000 are, I hear, now offering no advance at all. But I would want to know if it's their standard practice, or a new thing - if it's the latter, then it could be a sign of trouble because...

...times are tough, and publishers go out of business. Consider the risk that they go bust two months after your book comes out. No money for you, ownership of the books in the warehouse is a moot point (get on to the liquidator FAST and offer to buy them for peanuts), and although the copyright reverts to you the book has now been published, and you'd be very lucky to sell it again to another publisher.

The things I'd look for are

a) that the royalty is a percentage of cover price (7½% of paperback, 10½ of hardback would be standard for a trade book), not "net receipts". The former will pay you per book sold, the latter only by how much money the publisher gets from booksellers, which will be much lower - and variable, too, since they'll sell at different discounts to different booksellers.

b) if it is a percentage of net receipts then it should be a much, much higher percentage. It's difficult to be exact because their receipts will vary according to how much they sell your books for, but at usual trade rates I THINK (but please check) you should be getting at least 30% of net receipts, for it to come out at around the same rate as if it was based on cover price.

c) if it's a percentage of profits then they're a scam-merchant and you should run a mile; you've no control over how they decide what profit is, and you can bet your bottom dollar (only you won't have any) that their systems won't be in your favour.

d) when do you get the royalties? Industry standard is that they account in six-month batches, and after that have three months in which to pay up. So you should get the first batch of royalties nine months after publication day. There's one well-regarded little literary publisher which doesn't pay up till two years after publication date. Which means they can make money on it in interest, and you can't.

In other words, unless you've got a good agent to go over all this for you, I wouldn't go near this contract with a signing pen till you've had the Society of Authors check it over with their fine-toothed comb. 1) They can advise on all the implications. 2) , if you want to negotiate, it sounds much more forceful to say "The Society of Authors says industry standard is..." than "I want." 3) They can tell you if they've heard anything dodgy about this publisher.

You could also get hold of Harry Bingham's book Getting Published (Full disclosure: Harry owns the Cloud, and I do work for them), which has a good deal about this stuff in it. He makes the point that a "standard contract" is nothing of the sort. You could always ask for an advance, and see what happens.

Thanks very much for this, Emma - that's a huge help.

I'm on the verge of splitting from my agent, and he appears to be lukewarm on the idea anyway. Which would leave me reliant on the Society of Authors for further advice.

I note the royalty rates you cite are for trade books; mine is political history - would that attract similar rates?

I'm tempted to hold out for an advance, though things seem desperate in publishing right now. I've heard of some of Britain's top journos securing less than £10k for some heavyweight books last year.

"trade" is more about which market it's aiming for: it's selling through mainstream bookshops etc. to non-specialist, general (if informed/intelligent/interested) readers.

Rates for something which was basically selling to academic markets of students and specialists - libraries, direct mail, campus bookshops - would be more like 5%/7½%, say, as I understand it, though don't quote me.

That figure for good books by name journos doesn't surprise me at all. (Even Pippa Middleton's contract is almost certainly for a great, great deal less than the figures that get bandied about.)

You can always ask for an advance - why not? If it's an academic publisher, they're used to haveing academics over a barrel, because academics have to publish. But, also, academics have salaries, so one way and another in lots of ways the academic-publishing industry just doesn't expect to pay advances. The Society of Authors will certainly know lots about this, because a lot of academics, not having agents, use them as chief adviser/contract-checker etc.

If you don't have confidence in your agent then I assume you don't have much confidence in his reasons for feeling lukewarm - do any of them make sense? It could just be because 15% of the scenario I outlined above isn't going to keep him in paperclips. But if he has other reasons, about what he might be able to sell it for elsewhere, or what your next projects are, it might be worth listening to them, at least, even if they don't change your mind.

The other thing I would pass on, is what my agent said to me when I floated an idea to her of a book which was too specialist for her to sell. I said I might throw it at a few academic publishers and see what they said - the money would be piddling but that wouldn't be my main reason for doing the book. And she suggested self-e-publishing it. "The people who might buy it will find it," she said, "And in the end you'd probably end up making more money." I have decided that at the moment I don't want to go that route, but I wouldn't rule it out.

Emma, thanks again. Very useful.

The reasons I don't have any confidence in my agent are more to do with his poor communication and lack of urgency. Though I can understand his reluctance to get involved in a R-O deal - little commission, a long way down the track.

This would be my first book, so the lure goes beyond money, as I'm sure you can understand. I've also spoken to some serious writers/journos recently, who confirm just how miserable advances are at present.

That said, your points about a publisher's vulnerability in the current market have struck a chord. I will look up the Society of As today and pester them for some advice.

One last question: is it standard that if you accept a R-O deal you should negotiate a higher percentage of Rs than you would if you had also received an advance?

Yes, that's maddening (although book trade time in general is glacier time, and industry norms are unlike any others... There are some terrific agents who are pretty sloppy about such things, and their authors put up with it because they're terrific in all other ways. There are also some agents who are just crap agents.)

"is it standard that if you accept a R-O deal you should negotiate a higher percentage of Rs than you would if you had also received an advance?"

I don't know - but I don't think so. Essentially an advance isn't an "also" - it's an advance on the royalties which they expect they'll be paying you in due course, based on their best guess of how it will sell. They'll have done all the sums the offer is based on on standard royalties.

(I should have said further up that a plus of royalties-only, in a sense, is that you will, actually, get some royalties. Most books don't earn out their advance and start paying royalties, and so the advance is the only money you'll actually earn from it. Harry, for example, would say that he's never actually had a royalty cheque for any of his novels, but that may change with something like his Getting Published book, as hopefully that will go on steadily selling for years in a way that few novels will. It's only a problem if they paid you a vast advance - and the book tanks. That is Not Good for your career. Though not necessarily terminal.)

But you could try arguing that you're doing them a favour by not asking for money up front, so they can do you a favour by paying you a bit more when they do pay you. But I have to say that, at a guess, I think you'd have to be in quite a strong position - they'd have to want your book pretty badly - for them to listen to you.

Of course, if your agent isn't involved with this contract - DO check that with the SoA - then he doesn't get commission on said royalties, which means his 15% isn't shaved off. Which equates to a slightly higher royalty...