It’s an interesting perspective.

Since I started writing professionally, the standard agent commission has changed from 10% through 12 to 15%, while author royalties in traditional publishing are still pretty much frozen at 10%. E-books are changing that in a big way, as authors now expect and demand much higher royalty rates for e-books.

But it’s certainly worth educating authors that a big advance is not necessarily in their interests if a larger cut of the book proceeds itself is a viable alternative. I can certainly see why e-publishers are going this way, as they need to work harder to convince authors that going with them is better than simply self publishing.

After my first disastrous author experience with ridiculously inflated advance back in the 90’s, I have been far more comfortable with the more modest advances that are now professional standard, even if they don’t go very far towards paying off my mortgage.

Sure, you never have to pay the advance back, but it’s still a debt of sorts, and it’s very hard to sell another book with that ‘debt’ on your record. Which makes the massive advances feel more like those credit card companies that offer you stupidly high amounts of credit.

Of course it also helps if the book SELLS, whatever happens.