Notes on a Book Deal

Current intel from the publishing trenches

Photo by National Library of Scotland on Unsplash

Hi Everyone!

Reading Yellowface over the past few days, I’ve been struck by the amount of inside publishing baseball that fills R.F. Kuang’s pages. Satirization of cultural appropriation aside (a topic for a different post), it’s hard for me to believe that anyone who’s not an aspiring author would care about this story, yet its success suggests the appetite for intel on the book business is far greater than I’d imagined.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share some of the industry changes I’ve encountered with my latest book deal, my first with a major NY publisher in over a decade but the tenth of my career. Because this is a project I’m ghostwriting, I will not be revealing any specifics about our book, topic, author, or publisher. This post is about industry practices, how they appear to be shifting, and how they are likely to affect any debut author who’s not already a household name. (Different rules apply if you’re a celebrity!)

And since I haven’t offered many exclusives for paying subscribers lately, this long one’s just for you!