How to Misread a Deal Announcement

Hi friends,

I have been a longtime reader of Publishers Marketplace, and in fact, it's deep in my lore that the Publishers Lunch newsletter is why I became an agent. I strongly recommend regularly reading their work. (Did you know they have an Author's Lunch newsletter?) One of the main draws of a paid sub over there (and no, I don't get any kickbacks) is access to the deal announcements. You may have seen these prefaced by the author posting they have "some news." Here's a recent example:

This is not my book. Tbh, it was just what I was reading when I got the idea for this post. I don't represent Lauren Blakely and I have not read her work. It looks great, though. And she's very prolific. Mazel to her!

However, if you were reading the deal announcements, maybe studying them to learn about the market and/or plan your next project, here are all the ways you can misread it and find yourself on the wrong track.

Christmas book = BIG BUCKS

One of the hallmarks of a PubMarketplace deal announcement is the euphemisms employed to talk about money. This deal is categorized as "significant," which means an advance somewhere between $250,000 and $499,000 dollars. That's a big range, but also, those are big numbers! The agent/author decide whether to reveal the deal amount here most of the time, and it has not been my experience that anyone involved actively inflates those numbers. When numbers are not listed, it's usually because the author didn't want to reveal it, not that it was so big or so small that it was problematic to mention it. (I guess schmagents might lie about deal numbers, but that's probably not their biggest problem.)

You should not, however, draw the conclusion that writing a Christmas or other holiday book will garner you a similar advance as this deal here. As I am not the agent on this deal, I cannot tell you exactly why this author got this advance. But I can guess. It probably had something to do with the fact that she's a hugely successful self-published author and this editor has picked up some of her previously self-published books. This is a whole 'nother can of worms that makes this deal even more un-replicable. But it wasn't the subject matter alone that lead to this payday.

Holiday books are HOT right now!

I do not have any special insider knowledge about how well holiday-centered books do in contemporary romance. I will say that often what editors say about them is that they're a hard sell because readers are only in the mood for them for a few months a year, but an author's previous strong sales track record is the tide that raises all boats. I would not run right out and start writing a holiday hook book after reading this one deal announcement because you think it'll be an easy sell.

This must mean contemporary romance is back, right??

Contemporary romance is a bit of a hard sell these days, in my experience and anecdotally according to some of my industry colleagues. Romantasy has taken so much shelf space that it's pushing other things out. I also think readers have quite a bit to choose from in this category and supply may be meeting or exceeding demand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's never going to go away as a category, but like a lot of things in publishing, it might be a tough road to take if you're just starting out.

I should send my Christmas book/contemporary romance to this agent.

Maybe you should! Michelle is great, as is her colleague Amy, and it looks like, they're both open for queries. It would be a good idea to add them to your list to research further if they're right for your book. Nothing in this deal announcement should lead you to believe that you'll get a similar deal, or a deal at all!, for your work, but it is a good idea to add them to your lists for a chance at it.

This author self-pub'd so I should, too!

You wouldn't know it from this deal, but further research might have led you to the discovery that this author has a fantastic list of self-published books. You might think (wrongly) that such information means the only way to getting a "significant" deal from a big-five publisher is to start out in self-pub. I mean, maybe! But so much depends on your work, your audience, your genre, your timing, the market, your skills at publicity and design, your platform, your stamina, and your down right luck. I mean traditional publishing hinges on all these things too, except for maybe design skills, but still. One author's path does not prove the viability of said path for you specifically or other writers generally.

So what can you learn from this deal? That a big-five editor bought a holiday-themed contemporary romance from a highly successful author with a great agent. By itself, this one deal is not helpful in studying the market or planning your career. And that's ok! No one should take one piece of information and plan their whole career around it. Studying the deals section, however rigorously you want, can help you get a general sense of what's going on in publishing today. You're not going to remember everything you read. You're not going to absorb every possible insight. But if you make a point to keep up on things (if that's helpful to you, your process, your career, your practice–and it may not be!!!) you'll have a moment down the line when you get an idea and think hmm, I saw something somewhere about... and you look it up and there's a tidbit that unlocks something that helps and takes you one step toward your goals. This is how all study, research, practice, etc works. You don't have to rattle off stats or "nice deal" numbers or whatever to prove you've done enough homework to be "better" at publishing. No one has time for all that, even me! But investing some time in the study of the industry you want to be a part of can help, even if it's just reading the deal announcements every once in a while.

Helpfully yours XOXOXOXOXO,

Kate

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