Earning out
RIGHT up there with ‘Instant bestseller’ and ‘Richard and Judy’ earning out is the phrase every published author desperately wants to hear. For those of you at the beginning of the publishing journey who might not know what it means yet, ‘earning out’ means that your percentage of book sales (usually about 10% or in single figures!) exceeded the total figure you received your advance. Put simply, you made the publisher their money back.
In the space of a week alone, I’ve heard two other authors talk about earning out – one did it after three books, another after her debut. As my own royalties statement sees me languishing firmly in the red, I’ve felt simultaneously excited for them and envious of them. But it’s not the whole story. Earning out depends heavily on how much your advance was in the first place (it’s a lot easier to ‘earn out’ on $500 than it is $50,000) and how much marketing your publisher put into you. So, to my great relief, not earning out isn’t the end of the world.
My agent describes earning out after a year as the equivalent of getting a first – obviously it’s an amazing achievement but it doesn’t mean you haven’t done well if you don’t get one. Of course if you do get one, it improves your prospects immensely – it’s a lot harder for a publisher to turn down a book from an author who earned out, as it shows that not only do they have an audience out there, but that the publisher predicted the size of that audience right, making your success an endorsement of their instincts and marketing strategy (not to mention a lot of money).
But here’s the thing. Even if you don’t earn out, it doesn’t mean you won’t ever get another contract. Publishers will look at a number of other things like – how good the book you’re submitting is, whether you’ve got an audience, how the market itself is doing, how books similar to yours have performed. Don’t get me wrong – earning out is never anything but a good thing, but it doesn’t have to be the only thing.
The other thing to remember is that just because you didn’t earn out (yet) it doesn’t mean the publisher hasn’t made any money out of you. Compared to theirs, your percentage of total sales is tiny (let’s face it, it’s pretty tiny by any measure). So don’t go fretting about making the publisher back their money (they’re big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves) and don’t worry if you haven’t made your advance back yet. Whether you’re five pounds or fifty five thousand pounds away, your job is to write the very best book you can. While it might be easier said than done, that’s what you need to focus on, not whether or not you’ve earned out.