Q&A Thursday

Back to School Edition

Hi Friends!

Happy back to school to those in the New York City area! The day has finally come! And in celebration of other returns to form, let’s do a Q&A Thursday!

Z asks: My question is about advance payments from publishing houses, and whether or not there is a time limit in which to submit a finished work? 

Here is my imaginary scenario: I submit my debut novel to a publishing house and they offer me a nice chunk of money to tide me over whilst I make a few tweaks to my masterpiece. Hooray! - but it doesn't pay as well as my demanding, full time job and my money is going to run out before I've finished the tweaks.  What if I gamble away my full time job but the writing thing doesn't work out?

Will the publishers take into account that I'll need to write alongside my full-time job, for the short term at least? How flexible are they? Do they have different deal packages for writers, depending on their circumstances?! 

I'm in the UK by the way, but I imagine publishers operate in a similar way globally?

Oh, Z. I wish I had a comforting answer for you. I went more in depth about this here a while back. The good news is that publishers are generally fine with working around your day-job, or other obligations, when it comes to your delivery schedule or book due date. This part is negotiated up front and if you know you will only have a few hours a week to write, don’t promise you’ll have your whole book done in a matter of months. If your book has a non-flexible schedule, you’ll know it up front, too. That doesn’t mean your book can be endlessly postponed if you repeatedly miss your deadlines, but publishers know that life happens, and while it will delay your publication date, most schedules are flexible.

Publishers are not, however, flexible about money.