Anatomy of a Book Advance

Books by Cassidy Randall, Leah Sottile, Maggie Nelson, and Jason Adam Katzenstein; and Jon Krakauer unleashed, and book covers?

Author

Brendan O'Meara
March 01, 2025

The Riff

Of the thorny issues to talk about among writers, money is a big one. Few things lead to greater jealousy and resentment than talking about who got paid what. I imagine there’s a swath of the nonfiction literati who said, “B.O. got that? Da fuq?”

I’ve been transparent that I earned received (by luck more than anything) that coveted six-figure advance people fantasize about. Six-figures is a pretty big category. You need little more than a sixth-grade education to know that 100,000 up to 999,999 constitutes six figures.

My aim here is to offer up the reality of this $150,000 advance. I had thought about doing it as a podcast, but I think it’s better in writing so the math is easier to digest.

I was lucky in that my advance had a far more compressed timeline than most. Many writers who get an advance of this nature might have it spread over three or four years. Mine is more like 2.5 years … with an entire year of nothing. More on that below.

But first …

A Note on Privilege

Long time listeners of the show know I like to say that my partner lady wife is the breadwinner and we live off her salary alone (she’s also a fed gov employee, so this might change matters and we’ll have to sell our house and move … somewhere … not excluding our vehicle. No lie.)

  • She brings in the health insurance.

  • We have no children (We know our limitations … to a fault … We do have three dogs and their care is not cheap.)

  • We have very little overhead, never go out to eat (largely because we’re vegan and there’s only so much Chipotle you can eat and our dogs are so traumatized from previous lives that we rarely leave home anyway).

  • We don’t subscribe to any streaming services, not even Amazon.

  • We do have Spotify, but that might be on its last legs, certainly if the DOGE comes knocking … and we hear the footsteps.

  • We own one car.

  • Our only outstanding debt is our mortgage.

  • Any money I bring in is usually gravy. I’m more of the home-maker as I do the cooking, the shopping, the cleaning (though I’m not great and my attention to detail isn’t professional grade), the errands, the yard work.

Ok … I think that lays the groundwork.

And Let’s Be Clear …

None of what follows is a complaint. I’m deeply grateful I got to do what I did under the circumstances. If the above groundwork wasn’t in place, things might have been far more panicky. All that follows is to shed light on what the economics of this experience was like. The next one could be different.

2023: $60,000

First gross payment was $60,000 in early April 2023.

Subtract $9,000 for agent commission, so the net delivered to my bank account was $51,000.

Had to skim off $13,000 for taxes right away so when it was tax time we were good to go. Down to $38,000 available.

Right at the start, my wife was worried I wouldn’t meet my deadline and that we’d have to pay it all back, so I was very reluctant to dip into this reservoir unless I desperately needed to. I needed subscriptions to archives. I needed the usual business expenses of website fees, LLC fee, gear upgrades, paying for editing, paying for a genealogist, paying for photo licensing, etc.

At the start of 2024, I optimistically told our accountant that I planned on getting a gross payment of $45,000 ($38,000 after commission) upon delivery of my manuscript, so he drew up federal and state vouchers for estimated payments for the entire year: $1,300 fed and $600 state. Paid four times equals $7,600.

Now, I was under the impression that my second advance payment would come on delivery of my manuscript to my editor on my deadline of April 15, 2024.

This was wrong, wrong, wrong.

2024: $0 … oh, fuck

The second payment only arrives when they fully accept your rewritten draft, after legal gave it a go. So, for the entirety of 2024, there was no release of the second payment … but I paid those estimated taxes on money that never arrived, nearly $8,000 on no income. I’d go 22 months between payments.

Thankfully due to our paranoia that I wouldn’t finish the job and the fact that we can live off my wife’s salary, that $38,000 was never in danger of depleting.

BUT, had I not been awash in privilege, would $38,000 have lasted nearly two years? $19,000 per year take-home pay as a 44-year-old, college-educated dude with a beer tooth? I don’t think so. I would’ve needed another part-time job. Or freelance more. And I’m the worst freelancer in the world. I’m so bad.

So, though on paper the $150,000 looks amazing, you can see how quickly the money could very well have not lasted long under average circumstances and a longer timeline.

2025: $90,000 … oh … FUCK

Just last month, Feb. 2025, I received my second gross payment of $45,000 (22 months after the initial payment), net payment of $38,000. Since I paid so much in taxes on no income in 2024, I’ll be rolling that over to this year because my third payment — $45,000 gross, $38,000 net — is due on publication, so this year will be cush, and we might buy that van we’ve always wanted. Or we sock it away because of the DOGE. [I’ll keep this money socked away until the end of the year when things might settle?]

If my book earns out its advance (highly unlikely), I’ll have a $25,000 gross bonus.

Also, the hope is I can sell my next book this year, maybe even before my third payment (unlikely), thus overlapping the last payment of one book advance with the first one of the next.

This is the dream.

And so …

Given how murky information is around book advances, and money, and taxes, and how the six-figure advance is paraded around as a status symbol, I wanted to give you a peek as to how mine looked for this book as my life is right now. Things could drastically change. I’m notoriously frugal because I grew up with a fear around money and a family that was really weird about it.

I haven’t invested any of the book advance in Vanguard or whatever, but I do have it in a Capital One high-yield savings account that gives me several hundred dollars in interest per month, this interest pays for much of my overhead with the podcast and other things that keeps the machine running here at CNF Pod HQ.

I’m not “good” with money; I simply don’t spend a lot.

There you have it. Maybe I’ll get lucky again for the next biography, if I can give it wings in the next month for a quick pitch.

As you know, this newsletter starts here and goes up to 11!

The Books

  1. Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women’s Ascent of Denali by Cassidy Randall, did you realize how sexist male mountaineers used to (lol) be?You’re gonna get a good fix of Cassidy. She has an Atavist story coming out soon as well.

  2. Blinding Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets and the Fever Dream of the American New Age by Leah Sottile, looking forward to recording our second live podcast at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene, Sunday, April 13 at 1 p.m. Come meet Leah! Buy a signed book!

  3. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, a modern-day classic written ten years ago that feels very of the moment.

  4. Everything is an Emergency: An OCD Story in Words & Pictures by Jason Adam Katzenstein. I love a good graphic memoir.

The Other Stuff

  1. I’m way too proud of this book cover I made.

  2. Also, I have an “anti-social media feed.” It’s so stupid.

  3. Hank Azaria opining about AI anxiety and why his voice work is a full-body, full-soul experience that AI can never replicate.

  4. Rebecca Makkai talks about the burden of the blurber. I hated asking people for a blurb. I hated even more having to remind three of them that the deadline was five days away; it bummed me out that one ghosted me after happily agreeing to blurb. I batted 5-for-6. I’ll riff on asking for blurbs another day.

  5. Jon Krakauer is on a mission to discredit a fucking YouTube clown trying to debunk Krakauer’s account of the events that became his opus Into Thin Air. Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8

  6. OK, so, The New Yorker celebrated 100 years (in case you hadn’t heard, lol) with a meaty, two-week issue and I read it cover to cover! First time ever! And Lawrence Wright’s feature on a group of Catholic nuns who counsel the women on death row in Texas stole the show. It blew me way. Also a great excuse to watch or re-watch Wright’s talk on reporting as craft.

  7. On March 22, Matt Caputo is interviewing John H. Richardson in Bethel, CT about Richardson’s Sager Group collection of stories Sing Sing Follies. Matt asked me what I charge for an “email blast” and I’m like, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Since I hate the idea of money and selling off slices of newsletters and spam and a lot of things, I figured I’d just shout it out. Plus, I coincidentally proofread Sing Sing Follies for The Sager Group. What a world!

ICYMI: February on CNF Pod

Maybe Patreon?

If you want to help financially support the podcast and possibly get some face-to-face time with me to talk through some shit, consider becoming a patron. You can join for free if you want to lurk, but to get perks, you gotta thrown down that plastic. I’m thinking of moving the CNFin’ Happy Hour to Patreon and see if it sticks, or do Live Q&As. I have an A or two. https://www.patreon.com/cnfpod

That’s it for this month’s rager as we get closer and closer to the pub date for The Front Runner. Speaking of that, maybe consider pre-ordering.

Stay strong,

b.r.o.