If you’ve sold a book to a publisher, congratulations. You’ll be getting an advance, but it’s important to understand that the money isn’t paid all at once.
It’s great to sell your first book, and you’ll discover the joy of publication, but you’ll also have to deal with contracts and advances. Hopefully you have an agent to do this for you, someone who understands the often obscure terms in publishing contracts and helps you navigate the financial issues around your book.
It’s time to start thinking about money. You’ll get an advance for your book, and, while you may see this number as a lump sum, it’s anything but.
What is an advance?
An advance, or advance against royalties, is calculated according to how many copies of a book a publisher thinks they will sell, multiplied by the royalties the author is granted in their contract. Publishers will look at the type of book, factor in any notoriety you may have such as a social media following or being known for another activity, and estimate the number of copies they think they can sell. Publishers have formulae for this sort of thing, but a lot of this is guesswork. Publishers can never predict how well a book will sell, especially one by a new author.
The size of an advance also influences how much effort publishers will make marketing a book. They have to protect their investment, and larger advances lead to more attention to selling the book.
But the size of an advance doesn’t easily translate into how much money an author actually gets. Advances are split into three or four payments, made at different milestones, irrespective of sales. And while the advance assumes certain sales figures, the author doesn’t have to pay any of it back if the book doesn’t sell the publisher’s estimated number of copies. The only time an author pays back all or part of their advance is if they don’t deliver what is specified in their contract.
As we discussed in Publishing 101: How Books Are Published, from Author to Agent to Publisher to Reader, the time between when a publisher purchases a book and when it is published can be one or two years, sometimes even more. This lag affects how advances are paid.
How are advances paid?
Let’s look at an example of a one-book advance; we’ll assume for easy math that the advance is $100,000. If this is split into three payments, the money would be paid at the following milestones. Note that this is the standard way advances are paid for traditional trade publishing, such as novels or non-fiction books. Advances may be paid differently for other types of publishing.
- Signing: $33,333
- Manuscript delivery: $33,333
- Publication: $33,333
Assuming the author has an agent who charges the standard 15%, the author receives $28,333 net for each of those payments.
Since, for a first novel, publishers rarely buy a work that isn’t completed, the author will have a finished manuscript that they give to the publisher on signing. But "manuscript delivery" doesn’t mean the date when the publisher gets that manuscript; it’s when the editing process has been completed and the editor is satisfied with the changes. This can take from a few months to a year, depending on on whether the editor wants the author to make major changes to the manuscript.
After the manuscript is accepted and ready for publication, the publishing process starts. This generally takes from about six months to a year but can be longer, if the publisher feels that the book should be released at a certain time of year, such as just before summer or in the autumn.
A manuscript sold on January 1, 2026 will likely not be ready for publication before anywhere from June 2026 to January 2027, and could take up to a year longer to get into bookstores. That $100,000 advance sounded good, but has to be spread out over the many months between sale and final publication. Also, there’s income tax to pay on this, so depending on which country you live in and what other income you have, this amount can be reduced substantially.
In some cases, publishers may split the advance into four payments, with the final milestone being paperback publication. The math is easy to do here: $25,000 for each payment, or $21,250 after your agent takes their cut. And the paperback publication is generally a year after the hardcover publication, which generally spreads this money out over three years.
Some publishers, if they see promise in a new author, may offer a two-book deal. If we take the same $100,000 advance as an example – $50,000 per book – the payment structure looks like this:
Book one:
- Signing: $16,666
- Manuscript delivery: $16,666
- Publication: $16,666
Book two:
- Signing: $16,666
- Manuscript delivery: $16,666
- Publication: $16,666
These amounts are obviously much smaller, and, after the agent’s fees, they come to $14,166 each. Assuming that the author delivers the second manuscript a year after signing, around the time the first book is published, some of these payments may overlap (book one publication and book two delivery may be paid at the same time), so these numbers are more fluid. If the advance is broken down into four payments, then each payment is $12,500, or $10,625 after the agent gets their cut.
As mentioned earlier, an advance is an advance payment on royalties. Most books don’t earn out their advances, so authors are unlikely to earn any additional royalties. If they’re lucky and their first novel earns out, then they’ll get royalty payments, usually every six months, in addition to the above advance payment schedule. And if a book earns substantial royalties, an agent will be able to negotiate a higher advance for future books.
With all this in mind, it’s great to sell your book and get what seems to be a hefty advance, but it’s likely not enough to quit your day job yet.
Kirk McElhearn is a writer, podcaster, and photographer. He is the author of Take Control of Scrivener, and host of the podcast Write Now with Scrivener.