What’s The Big Deal?
Leigh Bardugo and the Multimillion-Dollar, Write-Anything Bookstravaganza
It’s a distinct pleasure when publishing industry news happens right on Shelf Life–writing day, doubly so when I didn’t have anything in mind to write about. It’s like all the stars aligned. Mercury must be in anterograde because the opposite of bad things are happening. For me, I mean. And also for Leigh Bardugo, I guess.
In the interest of full disclosure, I do like Leigh Bardugo’s books. Some of them anyway. I actually just dropped a coin (several) into her coffret yesterday, before I heard this news, in exchange for Hell Bent, sequel to 2019’s Ninth House.
I’m sure it goes without saying that Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House has nothing to do with Gideon the Ninth, although Gideon is so-named because she’s Cavalier Primary of the Ninth House. It’s not the same Ninth House. The Gideon the Ninth Ninth House is a distant planet inhabited by lesbian necromancers and the Leigh Bardugo Ninth House is located at Magical Yale and also there might be necromancers? And lesbians? I feel like the important distinction is the Yale part.
This news arrives on the eve of the Shadow and Bone season 2 premiere on Netflix, and I’m sure the timing of this announcement was designed to both bolster and be bolstered by any buzz around the show.
I’m going to explain the Leigh Bardugo publishing deal news by culling facts from this Associated Press article on the topic, and then I will share my commentary on the publishing deal and buzz surrounding it. I’m also using Macmillan’s press release as a primary document.
I’m citing these sources because there’s a lot of information floating around with no source, or at least no reputable source, for instance, the reputable sources cite the deal at “eight figures” and someone(s) on Twitter interpreted that to mean $10,000,000 when it could mean anywhere from $10,000,000 to $99,999,999. Then you have people repeating that Leigh Bardugo has landed a $10,000,000 deal when that isn’t confirmed. She’s landed at least a $10,000,000 deal. Might be more. Shrug emoji.
If I have time I might also talk about Brando Sando and the little Kickstarter that could. If not today then soon.
News broke yesterday that Leigh Bardugo has signed an eight-figure deal with Macmillan to publish twelve books across several of Macmillan’s imprints, in different genres, in different formats, and for different age groups. The Macmillan imprints specifically cited include Flatiron Books (the imprint that published Ninth House and Hell Bent); Tor Publishing Group’s horror imprint, Nightfire; and two imprints for young readers (kidlit, middle grade, and teen/YA), First Second Books and Roaring Brook Press.
Bardugo’s Grishaverse books were also published under the Macmillan umbrella by Henry Holt (another kidlit/MG/YA imprint).
In essence, Macmillan has pre-ordered Leigh Bardugo’s next twelve manuscripts for the breathtaking price of greater-than-or-equal-to $10,000,000—more than an $800,000 advance per title.
Leigh Bardugo is living the published author dream that everyone who doesn’t know the publishing industry thinks is actually the norm: You write a great book, it becomes a bestseller, Netflix makes a show, and you are offered infinity money for whatever you feel like writing thereafter. I feel mild anxiety that this news will inspire a whole new wave of folks to start work on their novel (a good thing!) in hopes of tapping out the end and immediately turning to work on the resignation letter from their day job (that’s the anxiety part). Leigh Bardugo started with a blank document and a premise—can’t anyone?
First, yes. Anyone can but not everyone will, because publishing success is a numbers game. Not every book becomes a bestseller. That’s inherent in the definition of the word bestseller. A bestseller has to sell better than everything else. For every bestseller there must be hundreds or thousands of worsesellers.
Leigh Bardugo didn’t reach this level of publishing success overnight, nor with her first title. Shadow and Bone came out in 2012, followed by its sequels in 2013 and 2014. Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom followed in 2015 and 2016. King of Scars and Ninth House in 2019. Rule of Wolves in 2021 and Hell Bent in 2023. Leigh Bardugo turned out nine bestsellers in eleven years—almost one bestseller per year for a decade straight. All hits. No misses.
Oh, and not to mention Wonder Woman: Warbringer in 2017 for DC Comics (a full-length prose novel), The Language of Thorns also in 2017 (a collection of short stories), and Demon in the Woods in 2022 (a Grishaverse graphic novel). That bumps her total manuscript output to twelve in eleven years. I’m just not clear on the bestseller status of these three.
Consider what this publication history/track record indicates two things about Bardugo if you are looking at her from a publisher’s perspective:
You can trust her to hand you a new manuscript annually; and
That work is guaranteed bankable.
This all sums up point one, which is: Leigh Bardugo did not receive an eight-figure book deal as the ink dried on her first manuscript. She spent a decade writing back-to-back bestsellers first.
The second point is that Bardugo is certainly not receiving a check for the full eight-figure sum up front, as in, she gets one check today and then hands over manuscripts for the next several years until she’s met her contract terms. Publishing doesn’t pay anything or anyone like that, at least not that I know of or ever heard of. She’ll likely receive a chunk at signing, and then additional chunks of that eight-figure amount as she meets milestones set forth in her contract: Likely with the delivery of each completed manuscript, possibly also with the publication of each title, and maybe when she meets other interim milestones as well.
If Bardugo continues to write about one manuscript per year, the total amount agreed in the deal will be paid out over perhaps a dozen years. If we assume that “eight figures” means $10,000,000 (the minimum it could mean!!), that’s a little over $800,000 per year. Keep in mind, this is in advances and does not include whatever royalties she’s earning from her current titles, media deals, and whatever royalties she’ll earn on the future titles.
Eight hundred grand per year is a lot of money. It’s a lot more than the average NFL player makes (but still way less than the average NBA player makes). There are software engineers at FAANG companies making that kind of salary. A Realtor having a real good year can make that kind of money.
For most of us, $800,000 or more coming in per year for twelve years guaranteed would be plenty for us to quit our day job. I’ll give you that. But this contract is for Macmillan to secure Bardugo’s work product for many years to come—it’s not a one-time, eight-figure payday, after which Bardugo can turn around and strike another deal like this next year.
A lot of the controversy and criticism I saw on social media over this deal centered on anger and disappointment over a major publisher directing a significant chunk of resources to acquiring the work of one person, rather than spreading those funds around to many authors, thus creating more opportunities for authors and a more diverse slate of content for the Macmillan reader over the next however many years.
This neglects to take into account how the Big Five trad publishers work; that is, how they earn the revenue that funds their operation.
Traditional publishing is a game of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Everyone at the trad publisher is trying to sign, produce, and ship a bestseller. That is definitely what they’re doing there, all day every day. They’re not necessarily looking for the best books—the best written, the most original. They’re looking for the books that will sell best. They’re in the business of selling a lot of books. The more books they sell the more successful they are.
Not every book a publisher publishes in a year will be a bestseller. (See above discussion of what best means.) The goal is to publish all bestsellers, but realistically a publisher will put out a handful of bestsellers per among the many titles they publish.
Unfun fact: The average book sells fewer than 300 copies in US retail channels in its lifetime.1 Fewer than 300. Lifetime copies. Sold.
Fun fact (for Leigh Bardugo): Leigh Bardugo’s titles have moved more than 5 million units.
The publishing company takes a loss on many of the books they publish each year. The disproportionate earnings that come from their handful of bestsellers are the revenue for the entire operation.
When we hear about a publishing company paying a large advance to an author for their book, we may think, “That’s an obscene amount of money and so many authors get less—or nothing.” That’s not wrong to think; it’s true. There’s a tremendous lack of equity in the distribution of advances. White authors are much more likely to get a large advance, and with less of a publishing track record under their belt, than BIPOC authors.
That said: If the advance secures a bestseller for the publishing company, the proceeds of that bestseller will go on to fund more advances for other authors. The revenue that comes from that title makes it possible to publish all the other titles that aren’t going to be bestsellers.
Now: That does not mean that the distribution of advances is fair or equitable, because it’s not. That’s a whole other problem.
But it does mean that, given the chance to secure the next twelve Leigh Bardugo titles up front—titles that are practically guaranteed to go on to become bestsellers when they publish—Macmillan is making a smart financial move to secure revenue that will create opportunities for more authors down the line. Some of the money is going toward enriching Bardugo, and some toward enriching Macmillan and its shareholders, but a lot of the money will also be plowed back into Macmillan’s operating costs and, eventually, become advances for other authors.
I don’t think I’m a simp for Leigh Bardugo, myself. I have liked some of her books and others not. I don’t know her personally. She seems nice. I like her black lipstick. Others may disagree. I mean, others may disagree and think I’m a simp for Leigh Bardugo. I hope no one disagrees about the black lipstick.
This Shelf Life isn’t an explanation of why I think Leigh Bardugo deserves a check for $10,000,000 or more; but I hope it is an explanation of why this deal makes sense for Macmillan from a financial perspective; how it will benefit other authors besides Leigh Bardugo rather than sucking up resources that could otherwise go to others; and hopefully also illustrate the work over many years that has gone into Leigh Bardugo’s publishing track record and put her in a position to reap this deal today.
Also, I kind of feel like if a press release came out from Simon & Schuster saying they had secured the next twelve Stephen King novels for an eight-figure advance, nobody would be surprised or disappointed in that news. But maybe I am wrong. I often am.
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