Brynn asked, "Does a publisher lose money if a book doesn't earn out?"

I get this question a lot, and to answer it I need to beg your forebearance… Let me answer this with hard numbers, so that I can make my case. It will take a couple minutes to run the numbers.

Remember, every business can lose money. Retail shops, service business, even publishers. I mean, if you own a shoe store, you order in shoes that don't sell, and you have to drastically reduce prices, you can lose money on each pair of shoes sold. Publishing is no different. The publishing house pays out advances, they pay an editor, hire a cover designer, buy ink and paper, then pay a printer, and cover overhead such as the light bill and the editor's long distance phone calls. A lot of expenses are involved in every book. I like and respect publishers, and as a longtime agent, I WANT them to make money and stay in business. So I'm just answering a question, not writing a polemic. 

That said, the argument put forth that an unearned advance equals a loss for a publisher just isn't true. (Or at least not the whole truth.) All you have to do is look at some math…

Let's take some big book the publisher is doing with a celebrity. She's created a $25 hardcover book, and the publisher has paid her a $100,000 advance. The average discount a bookstore gets when ordering a book is roughly 50% — so they're paying the publisher $12.50 for that book. (In reality, it could be less, and there are a thousand factors determining that amount, but let's use a conservative 50% for the sake of clarity). From that amount, you have to subtract the author royalty on the first 5000 copies (the author will be paid $2.50 per book), the next 5000 copies ($3.125 per book), and

Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.

The thing that’s going to make every fiction writer reading “Thursdays with Amanda” let out a big sigh of relief is this: publishing houses don’t expect new fiction writers to have huge platforms. In fact, for the most part they don’t expect you to have any sort of platform.

But before you shut down your blog and Tweet your good-byes to social media, know this…while they don’t expect you to have anything impressive, they do expect you to have a social media presence. And to that, I say if you’re going to do it, you may as well do it right. Because you never know when the thing that tips a house toward publishing your great American novel is the fact that you have a devoted following. Even if the following is a mere 1000 (In his book TRIBES, Seth Godin talks about how 1000 devoted followers are all you need).

For the past two weeks, we’ve talked about blogging. First, we went over some of the rules of a great blog and a great blog posts. Then, we discussed what makes your blog searchable and how to get readers to find it. So this week, we’ll wrap up the blogging portion of this author platform series by discussing how to blog as a fiction writer.

Blogging as a fiction writer is difficult. So difficult, that if I were in your shoes, I’d probably choose something else to build my platform. Maybe Facebook or Twitter. Something easier. Because unlike nonfiction authors, fiction authors aren’t really experts at things. They don’t have people coming to them, looking for answers or solutions or world peace. They don’t have that clear topic to drive their blog. They just have themselves

Elizabeth wrote to ask, "Can you tell me the basics of how to get an agent, when to get an agent, and how the agent relationship works?"

I have responded to this basic question in the past, so let me repeat some of my old ideas…

First, remember I’m a literary agent, so I'm either "experienced" or "biased," depending on your position. I’ve been in the publishing business for more than 20 years, full time as an agent for the last 14 or so. I made my living as an author and, later, as an editor before I fell away from the Lord and became an agent. I was with one of the top literary agencies in the business for many years, and now I’m out on my own – so I admittedly have my own perspective. Second, I’m pretty successful at what I do, in a business where some people call themselves “agents” but don’t seem to know what they’re doing (and, consequently, don’t last very long), I’m fairly well known in the industry and, by and large, have developed a pretty good reputation (more evidence for the existence of God). Feel free to ask around and see what others say. Third, most people who know me will tell you that I’m not an agent evangelist. I happen to know there are some very good things a literary agent can do for you (no matter what Jon Konrath says), but I’ll be the first one to tell you that not everybody needs an agent. And I’m fairly safe in talking about this because I’ve been saying the same stuff for years.  So I’m going to give you my opinion…

When NOT to get an agent:

-When you're not a proven writer. Generally, publishers are looking for great ideas, expressed through great writing, and offered by a person with a great platform. Sometimes they get all three, usually they settle

Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.

Thanks for tuning in to my ongoing discussion on author platform! We’re on post two of a three-post miniseries on building your platform through blogging. (If you missed it, last week we talked about the components of a great blog post). This week, we’re going to look at some things you can do to improve traffic and blog searchability. (Is that a word? you ask. Thanks to Google, yes).

Seven Ways to Build a Platform Through Blogging:

1.      Title it right – Google is structured so that the title of your blog post helps determine its position within searches. The more searchable terms/keywords that a title has, the more likely it is to be pulled up in a search result. Confused?

Think of it like this…When people do a Google search, Google, in its infinite wisdom, pulls out what it deems to be the keywords of that search. You can throw an entire sentence at it, and it will pull out the proper nouns, nouns, and possibly verbs. It then moves across the Internet to find a match for those terms, and relies heavily on page titles to do so. This is why it’s key to avoid vague blog post titles, such as “Introducing my new book!” and “Happy to be home!”. These will get you nowhere because the words within them are overused. They aren’t specific enough. Still confused? Stay with me here…

Let’s say you do a blog post on your next book, which is about a cowboy winning the heart of a school teacher. You want to name the post “My next book!” but realize that would be Google suicide because the odds of your post coming up when someone searches for “book”

There's always a ton of publishing news going on, and I realize it's tough for most writers to stay on top of it all. The fact is, you DON'T NEED to stay on top of it all. But occasionally it's nice to know what's going on, so you can impress your friends or get girls to notice you at parties. So may I share a handful of things I think you should be aware of?

Donna wrote to say, "I heard an agent speak at our writing group. He sounded interesting, so I went to his website, which is interesting but I wasn't sure I could trust it. You have to contract with them for a year and pay an up-front fee of $195, though it's not clear if that is per project for for all your works. Is that the usual course?"

Yikes. Several thoughts come to mind… First, don't go to any agent that asks for an up-front fee. That screams rip-off. I don't know of any credible literary agent who asks you to send him or her a check right off the bat. You can't be a member of AAR by charging fees, and you'll get listed in "Predators and Editors" if you do. Stay away from fee-based agents. (And if you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book Ten Percent of Nothing, which offers a fine expose' of scam agents.) Second, you don't want to sign up with an agent you know nothing about. Websites are marketing tools, and some of them over-promise when in reality the agent will under-deliver. I can claim anything I want on my website (that I'm the best agent in history, that I'll make you a million dollars, that I look exactly like Brad Pitt), but if we don't know each other, and if we've never met, HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE? Be cautious over sites that over-promise. (For the record, I look exactly like Brad Pitt. Especially if you stand far away. And squint. And are blind.) Third, be wary of agents trolling for business by sending you advertisements. It's one thing to meet someone at a conference, or to begin a dialogue over a submission you've sent in — most of the authors we represent we met somewhere and had a discussion with, or they were introduced to us by