Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Unagented? Expect No Advance

Trending, I just heard about it: Book publishers who'll consider unagented submissions if the author agrees to forego any advance should the work be accepted. Last night I met a first-time novelist (genre: psychological thriller) who signed such a deal. Thrilled to pieces, she is, and her friends are impressed. That's her compensation. Unagented, with no one advising her, she has no clue that she has sold herself short and made it yet harder for all other writers on the face of the earth to obtain an advance.

Expect the "non-advance contract" to become the norm, because it's great for the publishers and because the authors are so desperate and vain they don't care. When you yourself find a publisher, expect to be handed a non-advance contract, and that your objection will be met with the response that such contracts are now standard industry-wide.

(Extended useless tirade goes here; instead, watch Pay the Writer, 3 minutes 25 seconds.)

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