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Royalties monthly or an advance and royalties six monthly?

Posted on 1st September, 2024

There’s been a lot of chat in Bookseller and on various loops about whether the new, smaller independent publishers have the better marketing model than the old traditional ones. If you’re lucky enough to get a book deal with one of the big five, or possibly some of the next rank of traditional publishers, then you will get an advance and then be paid royalties, if you’ve earned out the advance, every six months.

I have a friend who used to write for one of the big five and had become accustomed to getting money in advance and has found it much harder to adjust to the no advance and monthly royalties model that my publisher and all the new digital first publishers have adopted. This means that you can go a year without getting any money at all and this can be difficult for some who had come to rely on having money upfront.
That said, this particular friend didn’t have a huge advance – around £10,000 and rarely received royalties. Advances back in the day – I’m talking twenty years ago – could be as high as a quarter of a million for a full book deal – I had a very good friend who used to regularly get that sort of advance. Nowadays I don’t think anyone – apart from the massive sellers – receive a fraction of that.

There is prestige, of course, to be able to say that you write for Pan Mac, Hodder, Hachette,et cetera, that you have your books in supermarkets and on the shelves in Waterstones, but I’d rather have money in the bank each month and no books in supermarkets.

Boldwood are the best digital first publishers in my opinion, but I would say that as I write for them, and the CEO, Amanda Ridout, said in a Bookseller interview that if she ever had books in a warehouse or gave her writers an advance then to shoot her – I think that’s what she said, I might be wrong but anyway she certainly has no intention of going down the old-fashioned route.
I signed with them in the March 2021, still had a final book to write for Aria before I could write my first book for them, so didn’t have a book out until the following January. We then wait ninety-one days from the first statement to be paid but from then on the royalties arrive around the middle of the month without fail.

I think the fact that submissions are closed for Boldwood, that I know of at least four big names who have joined our ranks recently, speaks for itself. I don’t have books in the top hundred on Amazon but usually have at least nine titles under two thousand and have been registered for VAT for two years now. You won’t see my books on any shelves apart from those at The Works but you will see them high in the charts all over the world.

I think I’ve made my position clear – digital first and monthly royalties for me – what do you think? Is the prestige of seeing your books on bookshelves more important than knowing your books are being read by hundreds of thousands of happy readers all over the world?

Fenella J Miller