Janet Evanovich is a super author and most adore her Stephanie Plum series (as evidenced by her last book—number 15–selling nearly 1 million copies in hardback), but really, how far is too far when it comes to money? I mean, we all want to make a living doing something we love. We also want to make money for our families. But how much is too much? Could you ask your publisher for $50 million for a 4 book deal? If you produced 1 book a year for 4 years, that’d be over $10 million a year as salary. Of course, rumors are told on the web every single day and the report by Deadline.com that she’s asked that much could very well be wrong. But the idea that the possibility is out there seems a bit much for me. I found an article on Publishers Weekly that addresses it a bit. Here’s an excerpt and link:
Evanovich is in the top tier of bestselling authors. According to PW’s sales ranking of 2009 hardcover bestsellers, Evanovich’s 15th entry in the Stephanie Plum series, Finger Lickin’ Fifteen, sold 977,178 copies, making it the seventh bestselling hardcover of the year. Evanovich was in good company, perched above #8, Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, and below John Grisham’s Ford County. Still, some observers, all of whom spoke on details about this deal on the condition of anonymity, said $50 million is too high for Evanovich. One agent estimated that to command the kind of money she was asking, she would need to sell roughly 1.25 million hardcovers.
Of course, 977,178 is fairly close to 1.25 million, so on some level the $50 million request may be reasonable. And a Forbes item, which ran shortly after the news of the deal broke, said as much—20 million Evanovich backlist titles sold last year, and she sells in the same stratosphere as people like Ken Follett, who supposedly got a $50 million three-book deal three years ago.
