“There are many arguments for and against the no-advance model, but I think it’s best summed up as follows: publishers will be much more willing to take risks on new authors if they don’t need to pay an advance, but since this removes the ‘we paid for this and we have to make it work’ pressure, many a publisher may reduce the amount of time, money, and effort spent on marketing these books. While a no-advance model would likely result in a higher royalty rate for the author, it won’t do much good if net sales are damaged by a reduction in in-house support.”
Earlier this week, the Pimp My Novel blog posted an update about the pros and cons of changing the publishing industry’s archaic advance system. Since then, a few agents have chimed in via Twitter and a lot of interesting theories have come up in the comments section. What do you think? Would ending advances mean more chances taken on debut authors, or would it result in the end of marketing campaigns for mid-list authors?
