Why Legacy Publishing Is Awful, Yet Some Authors Still Submit to Them Anyway

Throughout the twentieth century, authors had only one career track.

You wrote a book, usually polishing it for years before working up the courage to submit it anywhere. Then you spent just as long querying literary agents and acquisitions editors until one of them finally deigned to give you a chance and open the gates.

Even if you made it that far, which only 1 percent of aspiring authors did, your writing career wasn’t made yet. Signing a book deal and getting an advance didn’t mean you were a full member of the club. No, you were a trial member on double secret probation. If your first book didn’t earn out its advance, the publisher would activate its escape clause, and you’d be shown the door.

Often, having your career uprooted before it could bloom was a severe mercy. Because of the half of authors whose first books did earn out, 80 percent or more got stuck on the midlist. Each new book they submitted amounted to a new application for their own job. And though their profitable books financed publisher’s pet authors’ six or seven-figure advances, one flop could still mean curtains for midlisters’ careers.

But that’s painting with broad strokes. Let’s put some hard numbers to the anecdotal shorthand.

As of the early 2010s, back when the last class of breakout authors were landing their first book deals, the typical publishing contract featured these terms:

• The publisher got all rights to Book 1, with the right of first refusal on Books 2 and 3.

• They also got 85 percent of the cover price on each sale, with the author getting a 15 percent royalty

• which the author would not see a cent of until his advance was paid back out of his 15 percent on each sale

• said advance typically being around $2500 for a first-time author.

Let’s walk through the process set up by the contract.

Read the full post on Substack.

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