Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (1)

The $ Question (or, The Book of the Month Club)

April 23, 2008
Recall, friends, that The $ Question is an occasional feature here on Notes where we talk about how writers support themselves.  (Here's the inaugurative installment, with Joan Silber.)

I was standing before the stack of mass market galleys in the bookroom the other day with Jordan Foster, an editorial assistant here who, among other hats, is working with me as an assistant editor of the mass market reviews.

We were kind of awed by the sheer number of books.  (We were so dumbfounded, that we didn't even take a picture or count them! All thoughts of blogging were obliterated by the sheer bulk of the stack!)

We've gotten used to seeing a new book by stars like Fern Michaels every month (or so it seems).  But when we started seeing less-than-household names working at the 3,6,9, and even, one imagines, 12 book a year rate, we got to thinking.

How much can one really make doing this?  It's every writer's dream: supporting oneself as a writer in the manner to which one has become accustomed.  And writing in the myriad mass market genres and subgenres appeals to both of us. 

But neither of us has a clue what non-household-name people get paid to deliver a series of, say, seven books featuring the same girl detective that get published as mass market from the get go.

Anyone care to tell us?

And: relatedly: how many of the big names that do publish a book every month have a team of elves in the workshop?  Elves that take a cut, we mean. (Naming names is not only honest, it's delicious.)

The reward for most honest answer will be copies of the next three releases by your favorite book-of-the-month author.

Posted by Michael Scharf on April 23, 2008 | Comments (1)