The Book Report: Will Advances Retreat?

International mega-publisher Penguin Books is going to court to get back the advances they paid to some prominent writers & would-be authors for failing to deliver on what they promised in the contract.

Now for those who look at that paragraph and furrow their brow in a feeble attempt to understand, I'll do some explaining.

When a publisher wants a certain writer to publish their next book through them, they give that author an "advance." That advance is form of loan that is made in "advance" of the royalties that author would normally earn from the book's sales.

In a perfect world the author delivers the book that's contracted for, then it's edited, polished, published, packaged, and sold. When the "advance" is paid for, the author then starts earning royalties.

However, if the author does not deliver the book they contracted for, they are legally liable to pay back that advance, and that's the case Penguin is making.

Now some might gripe about the big bad corporation picking on the poor struggling authors, and commerce trying to force itself on art, but those people are wronger than a big box of wrong found on the wrong shelf in the "Everything Wrong" store in the heart of Wrong-ville.

Commerce is essential to getting books to people. It's how the industry can afford to manufacture, market, and distribute books to readers. Before its commercialization literature was the property of rich and politically powerful patrons who  could afford to keep poets and playwrights singing their praises as long as they're kept in food and wine.

Commerce got the printing press invented, it led to the eventual development of industrialized "mass market" publishing, making literature affordable to everyone capable of reading. It's what makes it possible to earn a living through art.

Then there's another angle.

Every advance that's paid that doesn't deliver a book creates a tiny black hole of lost opportunities in the publishing business. It means that money has gone out and nothing has taken its place to generate revenue.

That nothing can't go to another author who actually might deliver a book that could sell. For every writer who fails to deliver on their contractual promise, a minimum of one other writer is denied a shot at getting published entirely.

Sure, each individual black hole is relatively tiny, but they all add up to create a serious level of suckage at the heart of the industry.

It's bad enough that the publishing industry is so wrapped up in crazy bidding wars that result in millions upon millions of dollars in advances being dropped on trashy "celebrities," and pissed away chasing fads that are usually long dead and buried by the time the copycat books hit the shelves.

Publishing, like every other form of art/commerce, is a gamble at the best of times, and these lean times mean that no one can afford to pay people for nothing, because it hurts not only the business, but the art.