I’m not getting involved in the #publishingpaidme hashtag. I don’t talk about money/business like that, and definitely not on a public forum. As a friend of mine put it: “I’m not even that honest with my accountant and HMRC.” But, shout out to all those who were brilliant enough to share their advances on Twitter.
There were some massive surprises, and some not so shocking details: crime and thrillers are such a huge market that their advances are often higher, as publishers know they will make that money back. But this “sharing experiment” was done on the grounds of race. And what we found is that non-white authors often received lower advances than their white counterparts.
Roxane Gay shared the details of the advances for four of her titles, saying: “The discrepancy along racial lines is very real … But the published books earned out immediately and that’s nice.” In response, Mandy Len Catron tweeted: “I, a totally unknown white woman with one viral article, got an advance that was more than double what @rgay got for her highest advance.” I’m not a numbers woman, but I don’t need to be to see the writing on the wall.
