Living Off Advances

“Why is it,” Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) asks, “that writers who can’t recall their Social Security numbers can recite a rival’s advance to the penny?”
Meyer answers that question (and a lot more!) in an entertaining and informative essay on the back page of the Book Section of the April 12, 2009, issue of The New York Times. In his piece, Meyer goes into “blockbuster advances” that came about in the early 1970s. He tells how Viking sold the paperback rights to The Day of the Jackal to Bantam for 36 times the $10,000 hardcover advance it had paid the author. If you are interested in what your next advance might be, take a look at Micheal’s piece in the Times.