Will I Have to Pay Back My Advance?

Blogger: Rachelle Gardner

Do authors ever have to pay back their advance? This is a question agents hear a lot. Often a writer is nervous about possibly being asked to pay back the advance if the book doesn’t sell enough copies.

If you’re publishing with a reputable traditional publisher, then you don’t have to pay back your advance for lack of sales, or at least I’ve never seen such a case. Of course, everything is outlined in the author contract and I suppose it’s possible for a publisher to work that in (and the way things are going these days, it wouldn’t surprise me).

 

The advance is part of the risk the publisher takes on you. I say “part” because in actuality, your book is costing them a lot more than your advance. Publisher costs typically include:

• Editorial
• Cover design & production
• Typeset & interior layouts
• Printing & binding
• Marketing
• Warehousing
• Sales

So the publisher has a significant financial outlay before your book ever makes a dime (usually a minimum of around $50,000), and that’s why they have to make such careful publishing decisions. The financial risk is on them, and they won’t recoup any of it if the book doesn’t sell enough copies to pay for itself.

Just FYI, there are cases in which you have to pay back your advance, specified in the contract. This is usually if you don’t deliver your book on time or if it isn’t what you promised in your proposal. There are other ways you can breach your contract and consequently have it canceled and be expected to pay back the advance. So read that contract carefully, deliver your book on time, and make sure it’s what the publisher is expecting.

If, during the writing or editing process you change your mind and decide to pull the book from the publisher and cancel the contract, of course you’d have to pay them back.

But just to ease your mind, it’s not typical to be hit with a request to pay back an advance for a reason such as low sales.

 

Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash