THE CAREER NOVELIST
advances to unrealistic levels. One-shot mainstream novelists are
another matter; if commercial enough, for them the sky can be the
limit. Still, for me, sustainability is the truest measure of success,
and step-by-step building of advances and sales is, more often than
not, the best way to achieve that.
Another damage-control factor to consider is whether the plot of
a particular novel plays into a short-term trend. If your new novel is
a technothriller and those are suddenly hot, there are two ways to
go: (1) exploit the trend to the hilt, going for short-term gain and
accepting long-term risk; and (2) carefully disassociate your novel
from the crowd, possibly losing sales but gaining potential long-
term security by avoiding a trendy label.
Ideally, one's novels either immediately achieve and sustain a
high level of sales, or show a pattern of healthy sell-through and ris-
ing sales. If this happens, there will be certain temptations. One of
those temptations is to quickly become a full-time novelist. That
has its dangers, though, so it may be a good idea to consider the
"five-book threshold" and other measures of security that I dis-
cussed in Strategy Session I.
Another temptation is to quickly leverage up to bigger money.
The danger here, as I mentioned above, lies in forcing a publisher to
put out an unrealistic number of copies in the hope of earning back
the unrealistic advance. Letting advances lag behind earnings is
bad, to be sure, but big advances are not a safety net, either. I love
doing large deals for my clients, but it does take some skill to keep
a career from overheating.
In pursuit of big money, many agents and authors rush to change
publishers. Our open and competitive market is a joy, to be sure,
but unless there are obvious problems with one's current publisher
it may be wise to be cautious about making a move. I have already
mentioned the importance of backlist. There is another reason: if
you look beyond the headlines in trade magazines, you will quickly
find that most large leaps in advance levels occur in option deals;
that is, they occur with one's current publisher. Strange but true. Ask
around. You may be surprised.
A final temptation is that, having tasted early success, an author
is seized with the desire to write the Great American Novel. Nothing