How Much Do Traditional Publishers Pay in Advance? - article

Advances from traditional publishers can range from incredibly low to astonishingly high. It depends on how enthusiastic the publisher is about the book, how it’s been pitched to them, and what the author is bringing to the table. If the author has a platform of some sort, for example, that might make the advance go higher. In fact, there’s so much variation that it’s almost meaningless to speak of an average range. It could be as low as five thousand dollars or even lower. It could be as high as seven figures—although that’s very, very rare; most advances are less than a hundred thousand dollars. It can be hard for publishers to recoup a large advance if the author is unknown, but there are many factors that go into how a book is positioned within a publishing house, and the advance is only one part of that. As a result, the likely size of an advance for a particular book is something that’s almost impossible to predict.

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