Penguin pays reported $5 million to GAME CHANGE authors

[Nathan Bransford]

According to Crain's, Penguin paid $5 million for John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's follow-up to their very successful book on the 2008 election, GAME CHANGE. The new book will be about the 2012 election.

Excerpt from the article:

“This is presidential memoir level money,” said one executive familiar with the deal.

Others wondered about the wisdom of betting large on an election season that is still a long way off, and which may not match 2008 for drama, intrigue and soap opera plot twists.

At more than $5 million, the deal is one of the biggest in recent memory, and harks back to a period before the recession ate into book sales and put pressure on houses to hold down costs. But the giant price tag is also representative of a trend among publishers toward making bigger bets on known commodities.

Published in January by HarperCollins—which dropped out of this week's race after its initial offer was turned down—Game Change has been on the New York Times Best-Sellers List for the past nine weeks.

It has sold 356,000 hardcover copies according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75% of the retail market.

Think this is a good bet?

[Matthew MacNish]

I'm sure Penguin knows what they're doing. Personally I think huge advances are foolish and think it would be smarter to pay more points on royalties later. I used to own a small independent record label and paying advances to the artists was the single biggest hurdle to releasing records (yes I said records).

On the other hand they're probably just really smart. If they know it's going to sell that well the big advance probably will allow them to hang on to more of the royalties in the long run and end up costing them less overall down the road. Then again I'm just an unpublished writer, they're a big house who probably pay analysts a lot to figure these things out. I'm sure it will work out for them.

It nice to see someone paying big bucks to authors again though, even if it isn't fiction.

[Mira]

Wow.

This strikes me as risky, but possibly worth it. The recent election, with the first Black president, was dramatic and world changing. I guess Penguin is hoping that this will continue - Obama running for re-election, etc. Its only two years away, so it does seem likely that it will be high drama. And the authors already proved themselves and have a built in audience.

So.....I guess it depends on how much money Peguin has in terms of cost-benefit and whether the risk is worth is. But its very interesting to see a house do this!

Mathew - I really liked what you had to say.

[Colonel Travis]

Never knew the sales number but I know GC was a solid book. Amazon has it for $18.47, retail was $27.99. My knowledge of the business side of books is horrible, but my guess is that amazon/internet sales account for a greater percentage than real stores? Let's say the average price among all sellers is $21. That would mean about a $7.5 million gross for Harper. Just a guess, who knows.

I used to work for a member of Congress - trust me, election season is full of juicy stories no matter what. But in 2008 both parties had to grind through primaries and caucusssseseses (hate that word) for their respective candidate. That's not going to be the case for 2012, so half the potential drama will be automatically eliminated. No campaign knows what lurks around the corner, which means for a writer than you can always count on a wild card or two or 50. But taking that into account, there is absolutely no way these guys will be able to produce the same kind of book. Not saying they're incapable of producing another best seller. I'm sure they will. But I am skeptical the profit margin will be anything near to whatever it was the first time. Maybe a publisher takes that into account, though - pay them $5 million because we paid them squat last time, which in the grand scheme of things is like saying they got a $2 million advance for Book 1 and $3 million for Book 2. At the same time, the publisher could also look back and say - we got $X million for two books, when we didn't know if the first one was gonna take off - lucky us. Only problem now is that there is a new publisher. This would have been a harmless deal if it were Harper. But it ain't, and like I said, I cannot imagine Penguin is going to slurp up the same gravy. Seems like they might be slurping too fast, hope they don't start coughing all over the place and need the heimlich maneuver.

[Matthew MacNish]

Great point(s) Colonel. Let's hope the book does really well and the house makes a bundle. As writers we don't need the publishing industry to struggle any more than it already is.

[Nathan Bransford]

Never knew the sales number but I know GC was a solid book. Amazon has it for $18.47, retail was $27.99. My knowledge of the business side of books is horrible, but my guess is that amazon/internet sales account for a greater percentage than real stores? Let's say the average price among all sellers is $21. That would mean about a $7.5 million gross for Harper. Just a guess, who knows.

Publishers receive income based on the cover price - what a bookseller charges is up to them. Here's more on the economics: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/11 ... shing.html

[Colonel Travis]

Aha - Nathan, thank you. I've only recently stumbled on your blog and this forum. Very cool that you've done this.