Beyond the Advance Presentation for By the Book 9

In June 2020, L.L. McKinney, a Black author of young adult novels, began the #publishingpaidme hashtag to create a discussion on how the publishing industry treats Black authors: “what they’re paid. What the marketing is. How the books are treated. How one Black book not reaching its parameters casts a shadow on all Black books and all Black authors, and that’s not the same for our white counterparts.” (Grady 2020) McKinney’s call resulted in an online discussion across 65,000 tweets between authors of all races and the creation of a Google spreadsheet that collected information on over 2,000 titles.
While the conversation was originally meant to discuss the ethical value of book publishing, it became an economic assessment by authors of how publishers treated authors of color and women authors without a full analysis of the data collected. This paper would present the data collected from relevant tweets and the Google database to show not only the range of advances among participating authors split out by their race, gender, sexual orientation and the genre of their work, but also the publishers’ treatment of their titles in terms of deal announcements and pre-pub attention in industry publications. The paper is based on a multi-year project of cleaning and evaluating the collected data to assess what it reveals about the habits and strategies of American publishers in acquiring and promoting titles from a diverse group of authors across the literary, non-fiction, children’s, mystery, romance, and SFF genres.

1. Beyond the Advance: American Trade Publishing and the # publishingpaidme Hashtag By the Book 9

2. # PublishingPAidME Twitter hashtag begun by L.L. McKinney in June 2020. Call for transparency among white authors about book advances. Initial goal was to expose systemic biases in publishing industry against authors of color. Resulted in over 65,000 Tweets using the hashtag including hundreds of authors revealing their book advances Also generated an open Google spreadsheet where authors could report their book deals and advances. By December 2020 there were close to 3,000 entries. By the Book 9

3. The Author Advance Book advances are money the publisher gives to authors against their earnings. Initially meant to provide capital to author to support the completion of a book project. Became a way to lure and keep profitable authors at a house. In-house the advance is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. The higher the advance the more marketing and publicity generated in hopes of selling books to earn more than advance. One of the most secretive areas of trade publishing. Industry often talks of author advances in coded language: “major” deal. By the Book 9

4. Process Clean set of 65,000 tweets down to the 600 tweets that included unique information on advances and books from the author. (see Chip Cheek and N.K. Jemisin examples). Expand and complete Google spreadsheet to reflect all titles in a series and other publicly available information author did not include (publisher, pub date) Compare tweets to Google spreadsheet and add new entries. Split titles into genres. By the Book 9

5. Genre split 72 titles in Graphic Novels 176 titles in Mystery / Thriller 279 titles in Romance 479 titles in Literary F iction 583 titles in Sci-Fi & Fantasy 584 titles in Non-Fiction 647 titles in Children’s / Middle Grade 1,169 titles in Young Adult Fiction By the Book 9

6. Race, Gender, and Genre By the Book 9

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11. Median Advances by race for Cis Males and Cis Females By the Book 9 RACE CIS MALE MEDIAN ADVANCE CIS FEMALE MEDIAN ADVANCE OTHER AMERICAN US $24,500 US $ 35,000 BLACK AMERICAN US $ 25,000 US $50,000 MULTIRACIAL US $85,750 US $21,250 ASIAN AMERICAN US $ 95,000 US $30,000 WHITE AMERICAN US $10,000 US $16,750 LATIN AMERICAN -- US $20,000

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13. Thank you! John Rodzvilla , Assistant Professor, Emerson College, Author of Project Management for Book Publishing, Routledge, July 2024 Email: [email protected] By the Book 9