28 September 2006 Blog Home : September 2006 : Permalink
As I have reported, briefly, in The Daily Telegraph, the woman behind the nom-de-blog, Catherine Sanderson, has landed a highly impressive deal to write two books for Penguin.
Bloggers among my readers – and among hers, come to that – should take heart, not just from the romantic aspects of Catherine’s rise from humdrum office life to celebrity and success, but from the hard-nosed detail.
No one likes talking figures on these occasions, but I have reason to believe the contract is worth in the region of £400,000 and that more may end up going her way from deals with America and the rest of the world.
And this is where I get to be the party pooper. You see first of all I read this from the Boston Herald:Not so long ago, having a popular blog was the ultimate “in” to get yourself a book deal.
Now? Not so much.
Bloggers, buoyed by site meter numbers and Internet buzz, were the darling of the publishing world about two years ago. But when books hit the shelves, sales fizzled, and now it takes a lot more than a laptop and a blogspot account to make it onto Amazon’s top 100.
“They haven’t performed as well as publishers hoped,” said Boston-based literary agent Jill Kneerim. “It is still a phenomenon that people are hopeful about, but in many cases, people who are fans of the blog have already read the content. So what’s the point in buying the book?”
Stephanie Klein, whose blog “Greek Tragedy” at www.stephanieklein.com netted her a six-figure, two-book deal, released “Straight Up and Dirty” this past spring. It wasn’t the grand slam publishers expected. One agent told The Book Standard, “Paying $500,000-plus for that Greek Tragedy blogger was pretty dumb.”
Other hyped blogger books such as “Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq” (riverbendblog.blogspot .com), “Anonymous Lawyer” by Jeremy Blachman (anonymous lawyer.blogspot.com) and “I’m Not the New Me: A Memoir” by Wendy McClure (poundy.com) weren’t anything to, well, blog about.
Well you might claim that this is just America (and you could be right) but - although she (not unsurprisingly) fails to give details - Belle de Jour seems less that perfectly pleased with her book sales and I'm fairly sure that Tim W's Blogged is now on special 2 for the price of 1 discount at your local remainder store. So a £400,000 2 book advance looks like a bad move from Penguin because, at least in N America, the blogger-authors are less than commercially successful.I have received several emails from agents lately that make me want to reply with one line: Is this a joke? I am completely baffled by agents who obviously do not have the best interests of their clients in mind. On one hand, I completely understand that agents want the best deal they can get for their clients. On the other hand, the best deal is not always a tremendous amount of money.
It's not just a crazy urban legend, you know. Too many authors find their careers in tatters because they took that $150,000 advance thinking the publisher was going to push the book harder because they paid more money for it. That is hardly ever the way it happens. The book prints 250,000 copies, but 225,000 copies sit in the warehouse while 25,000 copies sit on bookshelves. Then the book goes to remainder. The author never earns back the advance, and can't get another contract to save his/her life. So very often, despite one or two successful books, this particular book (and maybe the second one on the contract that only prints 25,000 copies and sells 15,000) ruins the author's track record.
Time to start over with a pseud. But that's hard--it's hard to get a book published, period.[...]
Anyway, I'm frustrated, because sometimes the best deal isn't the most money, and I don't understand why some agents don't understand that. The end.
And if that were not bad enough as she explains in the comments people saying "so what? I'll take it anyway" are missing the point that these telephone number amounds of money don't get transfered in one easy to pay tax on lump:Okay, so you'd take the $150,000 for two books--minus your agent's 15%, spread out over the course of at least five payments (on signing, delivery & acceptance for #1, delivery & acceptance for #2, on publication for #1, on publication for #2--maybe even two more payments if the book is done in hardcover *and* paperback...), minus state and federal taxes... What are you left with? Not all that much money, and no career in publishing.
So here's the optimistic possible deal - if the first book sells well and the second shows up before the buzz has gone away she's OK and a budding new JK Rowling has been born. Then Hollywood gets in on the act, a yorkshire "Bridget Jones" film gets made, is the sleeper hit of 2009 and Petite gets to buy one of the gin palaces in Port Vauban and a "cozy cottage" in the country. Cool.