In Which I Share Some Good News (And Some Gratitude)

I shan’t dally in giving the aforementioned good news: hey, The Staircase in the Woods earned out its advance!

This is, as noted, good news. Very good news, honestly. The writers who are reading this right now probably understand this good news implicitly, somewhere deep in the marrow of their bones — but casual readers may not know what this means precisely, so I’ll do my level best to explain it:

When you and a publisher come to terms to publish a book of yours, you are often given an “advance,” which is to say, “advance against royalties,” which is a sum of money that could be five thousand bucks or fifty thousand or, I dunno, 2.5 million (earned at auction just before your book is canceled because someone believes you used AI to write it, ahem, ahem). That money is yours! You do not have to pay it back unless, I guess, you really, really fuck up.

The book comes out. It sells whatever it sells. And maybe one day, one day, it sells enough copies to appease the Molochian Demon trapped in the cellars of the Celestial Publishing Guild. The demon roars its pleasure at having fed enough, and that is when you quote-unquote “earn out your advance.”

Or something.

(Okay more seriously, it’s when your royalties for the sales of the book meet that advance. Once that number is met, you start actually getting paid those royalties rather than them being fed to the demon in the cellar.)

(I mean, there’s definitely a demon, I wasn’t making that part up. Honestly, when you think about it, demonic influence really explains a lot of creative industries!)

(Hail Satan!)

Anyway. That happened with The Staircase in the Woods, which is a very good thing. First because hey, now I get more money from the book. And I don’t hate money! I mean, capitalism is largely runaway terrible, but I still need to pay bills and buy apples, and money is how that happens. Second, it’s good because it makes the publisher happy. A happy publisher means they keep publishing me and other books like this one. Happy publisher, happy author, happy industry, happy cellar demon.

(That said, there’s a persistent myth that earning out the advance is “when the book becomes profitable,” but as I understand it, the publisher profits off of the book well before this point.)

A number of my books have earned out — a non-exhaustive humble-braggy list: Star Wars: Aftermath, Zer0es, Invasive, Kick-Ass Writer, Damn Fine Story, Wanderers, The Book of Accidents.

Now, my last two books, which is to say, Wayward and Black River Orchard, have not yet earned out. If we’re being honest, I suspect Wayward won’t, at least not any time soon. Black River Orchard could get there, yet. I suspect it’s close. Will someone buy like, 1000 copies for me? I’ll, uhhh, pay you back*.

I still don’t know why Wayward’s sales are a fraction of the sales of Wanderers — some combination of “came out a couple years too late” and “came out during COVID” and “people don’t even realize Wanderers had a sequel.” Who knows!

There’s also the facet here that I did not have this book bucket accounted. Which is to say, it’s part of a three book deal that included the two other books that did not earn out — so, those books don’t drag this one down, and it can earn out on its own. If books are bucket-accounted, you have to have royalties surmount the total advance for all three books, which can be fine if they’re all winners.

Less good if they’re not.

Anyway —

Whatever the case is, Staircase is close to equaling the sales of Wayward and Black River Orchard combined. Why is that? I don’t know. It’s easy to be like, “well duh the book is awesome,” but I like to hope that all my books offer at least some portion of awesome up to the readers. I think some books connect well with readers, some books hit at the right times, and some books also offer the proper alchemy of simple things like title, cover, concept, and so forth. Staircase, I think, at least has those latter three on lock — it’s very very easy to pitch, it sounds and looks very mysterious, it has a simple hook that hides what I feel is a complex execution, and I think those things work in its favor. (But maybe there’s also a witch involved who has given me her witchy favor! Honestly, that’d be great.)

The book has never really lost much steam in its sales — and paperback really gave it an extra bit of juice. I think also one of the more interesting things is, it has sold pretty low in e-book format. It’s very high on physical and audio. I don’t know how or why these things are, but I like it.

What I do know is that this means it’s really not me who got it to where it is now — certainly I wrote the book, and for sure the publisher put together the best package they could for it. But at the end of the day, it did as well as it did because of booksellers, librarians, and of course, readers.

AKA, you fine, fine people.

So — a huge, huge thank you.

This is because of you. You checked out the book. And you told other people about the book. Which at the very core of things is how writers get to keep writing.

THANK YOU I LOVE YOU ALL SORRY ABOUT THE EVIL STAIRCASE

* I will pay you back in heart emojis, which I’m sure is currency somewhere

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I would surely be delinquent if I did not remind you that tomorrow is the demonic goodies pre-order deadline for The Calamities at Doylestown Bookshop. You can of course pre-order it from there or anywhere after tomorrow! But tomorrow is what gets you the diabolical sticker, and the infernal and unique personalization.

Doylestown will send the book right to you — or you can pick it up at Dark Ink when I launch The Calamities there with Clay McLeod Chapman.

(Tickets for that event are here!)

Also, again, I’m going on tour for The Calamities (though I’ll also for sure be signing Staircase paperbacks) — I’m doing Philly, NYC, Doylestown, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Denver, St. Louis, and the Belmont Lit Fest in NC, plus more in October (NYCC, Ottawa Can*Con, Gibson’s in NH, Phoenix in VT, Oblong in the Hudson Valley.) You can snag all the tour details here. Including what stores, how to RSVP, what very cool authors I get to talk to, and more.

Oh, finally, you can watch me displaying the super-pretty-and-also-pretty-creepy hardcover of Calamities here.