yen

Like most in my profession, I spend a good deal of time poring over the deals listed at Publisher’s Marketplace (hereinafter referred to as PM). I often wonder if other industries have such coolio announcements whenever anyone gets a job.

Jason Delaw, Esq., graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law, recently hired to do litigation at Smith & Bowerson, for 250,000/year plus a kickass 401k.

You get to find out who is hiring, and why, and who the headhunter is, and how much they get paid… Of course, if my hypothetical Lawyer’s Lunch is anything like PM, it would be more like:

Jason Delaw, Esq., graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law, recently hired to do litigation at Smith & Bowerson, for somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000-1,000,000/year plus a kickass 401k.

Is it me, or are the “code terms” used at PM just a tad… unhelpful?

Glossary: “nice deal” $1 – $49,000; “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000; “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000; “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000; “major deal” $500,000 and up

I admit I was very thankful when they split “nice deal” (originally 1-100k) into two parts, but even that doesn’t quite get the job done, especially for debut authors and midlisters to whom a raise from 15k per book to 25k per book is a cause for celebration.

Then of course, there’s Brenda Hiatt’s Show Me the Money, which gets points for phenomenal effort. However, the statistics, outside the realm of category romance, are scant and many are out of date. For instance, Berkley hasn’t had “line” books in several years. Besides, a huge sale reported or a lack of reports skews the stats tremendously. Still it’s better than nothing, and can make a huge difference to unsold authors who are looking at the “nice deals” on PM and imagining their $99,999 check, before selling and getting 3k (or worse!) And of course, outside the Harlequin category lines, any kind of report is going to be a little misleading, since ever single title house has its midlist debuts and its lead authors, and what one house might pay 10 or 15,000 for, another house will shell out six figures.

The RWR has a column called “Sold!” in which more specific monetary values and details about a sale are reported without attaching the writer’s name. Unfortunately, if there’s the slightest bit of buzz about the deal at all, or the reader spent any time with Enclyclopedia Brown or Sherlock Holmes in her youth, she can usually discern the identity of the writer without too much difficulty.

Sometimes I think we should adopt the method promoted (only half in jest, it seems) by John Scalzi. (In fact, as I remember it, most of my friends did think of it as a “Next drink’s on Diana” deal). However, it must be nice for an author to be able to report her sale without having to hang up her bank statement. Especially if the monetary circumstances are less than ideal, one might not want to have a deal listed as a “You want fries with that?” deal. Somehow takes away from the other facts in your deal listing, such as “I wrote a book and sold it!” and “here’s the super cool premise!” The book may wind up being a sleeper hit, and anyone who overlooked it because of the paucity of dollar signs in the initial deal report would have a fun time swallowing their fedora.

Many of the sales reported to PM don’t even have the monetary codes attached, which of course, makes the nosy bitch lurking beneath my parent’s lessons of “It’s rude to ask someone about their income” wildly curious. (Though the why of it eludes me, because, even if listed, it would only put the truth within a six figure ballpark.) However, the point of PM is not to survey the economics of the matter, but to serve as a means for tracking who is buying, who is selling, what is selling, and where the trends are headed, and to advertise the lot to anyone who might be watching (Hello, Hollywood!). I recommend aspiring authors join just so they get an idea of what books which agents are selling and to whom. Take a look at the rise in YA fiction deals reported in the last six months alone. Anyone see a trend? Want to know if a particular agent is selling and what? Before you ask around for anecdotes on email loops, check out PM and see the sales (and names of clients!) Of course not all agents report sales in PM, but many do. Want to know who is buying your subgenre? Do a search at PM. Want to know who represents your favorite writer? PM PM PM

Want to know what people are making?

That’s a tougher nut to crack. And, in the end, the only truth is that there is no straight answer and nobody knows anything. Just as your book about Topic A might sell and her book about Topic A might not, just as yours might go to a small pub for tuppence and hers might spark a bidding war, just as hers might be considered YA and yours might go mainstream, just as yours might become a bestseller and hers flail along on the midlist… repeat after me: nobody knows nothing.