Publishing Perpectives Best of 09:
M.J. Rose on Changing the Way Authors Get Paid

As 2009 comes to a close we wanted to celebrate by bringing you a week's worth of your favorite articles that we're run on Publishing Perspectives. We'll be back on Monday, January 4, with our next new feature. In the meantime, enjoy the best of 09 and check our news blog for updates and analysis.

Today, M.J. Rose discusses how increased marketing and promotion demands on authors necessitates a change in the way authors get paid. Following Rose's article, publisher Bob Miller, founder of HarperStudio, responded in a separate article, which is also reprinted below.

Editorial by M.J. Rose

Shout it from the rooftops, or better yet, hashtag it on Twitter. It's time to turn the page on how authors get paid.
Times have changed, and with them, every aspect of the publishing landscape is morphing. And from my vantage point, nowhere is it changing more than in marketing.

Changing the Way Authors Get Paid

What is the Future of the Book Advance? By Edward Nawotka

In our lead story today, author and marketer M.J. Rose and publisher Robert Miller debate the future of what the publisher/author relationship. Both come at the topic from different angles, but they both agree that advances, as they exist today, need to change. Rose wants marketing expenses undertaken by the publisher to be deducted from the sum that must be earned out before royalties are paid; Miller believes that authors don't necessarily need advances but in return, should be entitled to a bigger cut of the profits.

(read on ...)