Wednesday, February 9, 2005
How much do science fiction writers earn?
Tobias Buckell is a new sf writer whose first novel is coming out shortly. He surveyed about 75 science fiction and fantasy writers to find out what their first-novel advances had been and how much they're getting these days. He's summarized his findings here -- the stats are about what you'd expect: writers are getting about $5,000 for their first books and about $12,500 for the books thereafter -- a little more if they have an agent.
Publishers usually Some publishers ask that their writers keep their advances a secret, so this is something of a landmark study. Tobias has a form online that you can fill in if you've sold one or more novels so that he can gather more data-points:
The typical advance for a first novel is $5000. The typical advance for later novels, after a typical number of 5-7 years and 5-7 books is $12,500. Having an agent at any point increases your advance. There is some slight correlation between number of books and number of years spent writing as represented in the 5-12.5 thousand dollar advance shift of an average of 5-7 years. Charting individual author's progressions, which I will not release to keep anonymity, reveals a large number of upward lines at varying degrees of steepness for advances, some downward slides.Link (Thanks, Alex!)
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