July 28, 2005

I’ve been lucky enough to twice interview Joe “JA” Konrath, author of the Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels thrillers “Whiskey Sour” and “Bloody Mary.” The second time we talked at length about the publishing business and finances for Bankrate.com. I had to cut out a lot of stuff when I turned it in, and my editor there cut out even more, but you can find the interview on www.bankrate.com. Check it out. Being left with so much material, all of it, I thought, pretty interesting, I decided to post the rest on my blog. And if you haven’t read Joe’s books, hey, what the hell are you waiting for? His website is www.jakonrath.com.

MT: Joe, back in the original interview for bankrate, we were talking about your six-figure, three-book contract, and we got to talking about advances and royalties, which is where we’re going to start talking right now.

JK: You know the difference between advance and royalties?

MT: I do. I just signed a 2-book contract. (With Midnight Ink/Llewellyn for “The Devil’s Pitchfork” and “The Serpent’s Kiss.”)

JK: That’s awesome.

MT: Yeah. I’m really happy with it. Well … I’m sure we could all be happier—

JK: (Laughs). We could all be happier!

MT: Very small advances, but same schtick!

JK: Money is… okay, go ahead.

MT: I spend it.

JK: Money’s good, but you don’t want too much money.

MT: I don’t?

JK: No. You don’t.

MT: Probably not.

JK: There’s a reason.

MT: Okay. What is it? You’re talking for authors.

JK: Oh yes.

MT: Why don’t you tell me.

JK: And again you’d have to verify my sources on this. I’m pretty positive about it, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a back up so I don’t sound like a complete idiot. There’s a new book called “The Historian.” [by Elizabeth Kostova] She got a 2 million dollar advance. Now from what I’ve heard she had a first printing of 70,000 in hardcover, which is a very decent first printing, but as an author she’s only making about $3 a book. Now do the math. If she sells out the 70,000, which would be impressive for a new author right out of the box, she’s only bringing in less than half a million dollars.

MT: So how does she make up the rest of the $2 million?

JK: Exactly. If you have an advance that’s too high you’re not going to make money for your publisher. And new authors should have a sell-through of better than 50%. Bestsellers have sell-throughs of about 70%. You know what I mean by sell-through?

MT: I do, but why don’t you explain it for this interview.

JK: Okay. The sell-through is the number of copies shipped versus the number of copies actually sold, because a great deal of them are remaindered, returned, or in the case of paperbacks, stripped and discarded.

MT: And fed into a warehouse furnace.

JK: Exactly. Or a pulper.

Now it’s very important that you have at least a 50% sell-through, and it’s also very important that you earn back money, you earn back your advance. And again, for the purpose of the article because you already know this, an advance is like a loan from your publisher. They believe that they will sell enough copies of the book and rates are pretty standard across the industry unless you’re a uber-bestseller like a JK Rowling or Stephen King. For a paperback the author is going to make about 60 cents. For a hardcover they’re going to make about 2 or 3 dollars.

MT: One of my questions, and it comes into this, is, I’m not 100% sure how it will break down because I’m not 100% sure what the costs of my books will be. My advances are fairly small and they seem to represent, I’m guessing based on about what I’m hearing, about 10%, which is fairly low, but it’s a large publisher, but it’s Llewellyn, not a New York publisher, but a large independent publisher. So I think, a lot of times…

JK: 10%, is this a hardcover deal?

MT: It’s trade (paperback).

JK: 10 percent’s standard for trade.

MT: Not the royalty, but the advance. They’re expecting 10,000 copies at, whatever, $15, and then they’re not indicating ‘here, we’re going to sell all of these, here’s your advance.’ It’s more like 10%. Do you get some sense of what yours was, what they were expecting to sell versus your advance?

JK: I’m close to … first of all, my advance was basketed. Basketed is another term for joint accounting. What that basically means is I do not get any royalties until I have made back the advance on all three books. So, if we broke it down because it was a 3-book deal and we broke it down into threes, right now I’ve earned back for Whiskey Sour, which was my first book. I’ve made enough money back that I should be into the royalty stage, but that money is being applied toward Bloody Mary and Rusty Nail. So I will not see a royalty check until I earn back my entire advance. You do not need to pay back your advance. In the case of “The Historian,” if she does not sell enough to justify her $2 million paycheck, she doesn’t have to pay that back. But the problem then is the next book. The next deal. The next contract. She could sell a tremendous amount of books, very high numbers, but if the sell-through isn’t good, if she gets less than 50% and she hasn’t earned back her advance, well, she’s going to be going down in numbers rather than up in numbers, and you want to consistently have higher print runs and higher advances. Why an author shouldn’t want a huge advance is because it’s very difficult to sell books if you are an unknown. The industry’s all about brands and names.

MT: In your particular case did you get some foreign sales and movie options?

JK: Oh yeah. Well, your agent will usually keep your movie option. She won’t include that in the rights sales.

MT: I’ve been quite happy. My agent kept mine and we’ve been getting calls from film scouts and production companies.

JK: Very cool. Very cool.

MT: So who knows?

JK: And I don’t mind talking money with that (The foreign rights deals). The biggest of the deals was the Japanese deal, which was $8000. (eight grand).

MT: Which your agent takes a higher percentage of?

JK: The publisher takes it. As the publisher has world rights. You don’t sell your writing. You sell rights to use your writing. Hyperion gave me a good enough deal that they took world rights. That means every time they make a foreign sale that goes toward my advance, which is fine by me. That’s great. Eventually, hopefully, it’ll get to the royalty stage. And if I have a hit oversees that’ll be the royalty stage through them, which will be through the royalty stage through me in the United States, and that makes sense.

MT: That was the question. Then you came up with the book deal. And you’re no longer a waiter, and so is it a big difference as a writer? You quit your day job…

JK: I was able to quit my day job, but my wife still needs to work.

MT: It wasn’t a huge change… yet.

JK: It wasn’t a huge monetary change yet, but it was a huge lifestyle change. Because now I can devote myself to self-promoting fulltime.

MARK INTERJECTS HERE: I just want to point out that Joe says—did you miss this? No?--Joe says he can devote himself to self-promoting fulltime, not writing fulltime. I find that fascinating, but anyway, we then went on to discuss how he breaks down the money and he said he pays $1500 a month for health insurance.

MT: I’m lucky. My wife has very good medical insurance.

JK: We’re not lucky.

MT: I’m not sure we could do it without her insurance.

JK: It’s obscene. You have to pay $1500 a month to cover family.

MT: Let’s get a bunch of writers together, we can all talk about health insurance.

JK: Exactly, but it is a big part of your budget for that.

MARK INTERJECTS AGAIN: We started discussing his books’ titles and whether or not he’s going to get a new book contract.

MT: I still think Frozen Zombie is a good one.

JK: I like that. I like the image it conjures up. But right now I have no idea.

MT: I have, on my own blog, I’ve talked a fair amount, everything about writing seems to be a leap of faith. The act of writing, but financially it seems to be. Worse for novels, but for everything, because you just don’t know what’s going to happen. And Stephen King wrote back in the 70s that the worst thing about being a novelist was security issues. For everybody. Robert James Waller vanished off the map for a while.

JK: He’s got a new book out.

MT: Yeah, I just saw that.

JK: I don’t know if he’s hit the lists with it.

MT: I just wonder how hard it’s going to be for Dan Brown to follow-up on The Da Vinci Code.

JK: He’ll never be able to top that either.

MT: I don’t think so either. Whether that’s going to end up crippling his career or not, I don’t know.

JK: He’s earned a billion bucks already. It doesn’t matter.

MT: It doesn’t financially, but his career, if he wants to keep on writing. I guess it depends on what he wants.

JK: Right, if he’s going to continue.

MT: I guess it’s what you want out of your life. Early retirement? Or work?

JK: I want comfort out of my life. I would like to get to a level where I’m comfortable and don’t have to worry about where the money is coming from.

MT: And you’re not there yet?

JK: I’m not there yet. Though, again, depending on when you want to pitch this article, my publisher is getting my outline today, so I should know shortly, possibly within a week or so, if I’m getting a second contract.

MT: Let me check my whiteboard. July 26. Just drop me a line or an e-mail.

JK: Sure. And I’ll let you know if it’s more or if it’s less, for how many books. And how I feel about it.

MT: I had a question here that I expressed, as, we talked about, you get a big chunk of money, and you go, “I’ve got to be practical about this,” but did you piss it all away on safe investments and lifestyle or did you splurge?

JK: I had a party.

MT: You had a party.

JK: I had a big, BIG party.

MT: That’s cool. No Porsche though?

JK: No, not yet.

MT: Maybe the next contract.

JK: Maybe soon. We’ll see what the next contract is.

MT: Maybe a Plymouth.

JK: (Laughs).

MT: I think you’d be interested in this. With this 2-book contract I got, I made a conscious decision to move away from mysteries toward thrillers, because there’s a better market potential. I read a lot of them, and it’s been harder lately, but I read them and think, ‘It’s a fine book, but… I don’t know … there’s too many of them.’

JK: Mysteries aren’t really larger than life.

MT: Yeah. That may be it. I remember thinking … I read an interview with John Sandford and he said, ‘Davenport’s like a movie star. He’s not really like a cop. He’s larger than life.’ And I think maybe that’s it, there’s a bigness and scale in certain types of books that will often make it onto the bestseller lists.

JK: Absolutely.

MT: I’m going to ask you one more official question. Where do you want to be in 10 years?

JK: I would like to be doing what I’m doing now, which is being a full-time writer. I know that I’m extremely lucky to have the opportunity to have this career, and sure I have hopes and dreams about huge advances and movies made from my books and number 1 on the NYTimes bestseller list, but in reality I’m just pleased to be in the game at all.