Grey Liliy's Journal

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/05/24/about-that-deal-ten-years-on/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=55778

Ten years ago today, the New York Times published the story about me getting a 10-year, 13-book contract with Tor Books, along with $3.4 million advance. And as it is, in fact, the tenth anniversary of an ostensibly ten-year contract, I thought it would be useful to check in and see where things are with me, with the contract, and with the future of my writing career. First, for context, the article I wrote when the news of the deal broke, and the article I wrote at the five-year mark. For this, the ten-year article, allow me to bring in your favorite and mine, my fictional interlocutor. Hello, sir!

I resent that you woke me up for this. On a Saturday.

Totally fair. Go ahead and ask your questions.

Ugh, fine. First: Have you, in fact, written thirteen novels in ten years?

I have not!

So much for Mister “oh, I never miss a deadline” over here.

Two things here: One, I do actually only rarely miss a deadline, and then for good reason, and also usually only by a couple of weeks at most, so there, and two, my release schedule is primarily dictated by Tor, my publisher, so if I didn’t write 13 books in ten years, it’s mostly because Tor decided that schedule was not actually what they wanted.

So how many books have you written in those ten years?

For Tor? I’ve written eight: The Collapsing Empire, Head On, The Consuming Fire, The Last Emperox, The Kaiju Preservation Society, Starter Villain, When the Moon Hits Your Eye, and The Shattering Peace, which comes out in September. Outside of that I’ve written four novellas, a bunch of short stories, some which have been made into two published collections, and two collections of essays. Plus four screenplays for Love, Death + Robots. So I would say I haven’t exactly been slacking.

I mean, I guess.

Thank you.

Why didn’t Tor want all thirteen of those books within ten years?

That timeframe was partially built on the idea that three of the novels I wrote would be young adult novels. Putting out those novels would run on a parallel track, because the YA market is not the same as the adult SF/F market, so we could release them on a schedule not too far off from by main releases and not worry about them cannibalizing sales. But then I didn’t end up writing the YA books.

Why not?

For a combination of reasons. One, in the ten years since the contract was signed the dynamic of the YA market has changed considerably, and yes, that is a euphemism, and two, the adult science fiction I was releasing was doing really well in terms of sales and market presence. So the question came down to, do we want to spend the time/effort to try to crack a wildly-changing market, or keep building sales and audience in the market we’re already strong in? Guess which we picked.

You took the coward’s way out!

Maybe. But the coward’s way out let me buy a church building, so I can’t say that I regret it.

What’s going to happen to the YA books on the contract?

As a matter of the contract, we’ll convert those books from YA to adult books, so I will still owe the three books, I’ll just write them for the adult market, and put them in the adult market release cycle. The YA books I was planning to write weren’t science fiction novels, so I’ll come up with new ideas for those novels. Which is fine. Coming up with ideas has never been a problem for me.

As for the ideas I came up with for the YA books, a number of things could happen with them. I could pitch them as film/TV ideas — and in fact one of them had already been optioned for a TV series a few years ago, I “sold it in the room” a while back, but it didn’t pan out in development — or I could retool them and write them as novellas, or I could hand them off to another writer to build out, or whatever. There are options. They just won’t be YA novels from me at this point.

Even at a “one novel a year” schedule, you’re still slightly behind, you know.

Maybe. On the other hand I can’t complain. For example, I didn’t have a novel come out in 2024 because, as it happened, the one day Tor had open on its schedule for a book from me was Election Day in the United States, and oh boy we didn’t want to put a book out that day. We bumped When the Moon Hits Your Eye to March 2025 instead. That turned out to be a pretty smart maneuver, not just in avoiding election nonsense, but because the previous book, Starter Villain, has had some really strong legs, and we were able to promote the paperback release in October, putting the book back into bestseller lists for weeks at the end of the year, and into the holiday season.

The long-term contract isn’t just about “a book a year, every year” even if, on average, that’s the goal. It’s also about having the long-term flexibility to map out the best course for all the books we have to work with. Sometimes, as in the case with Starter Villain, that means letting them have a little extra time in the spotlight. The schedule is a guideline, not a rule.

That sounds like something a slacker would say.

Well, I’ll have two books out in 2025, if that’s really important to you. And another in 2026. And so on, for a while.

So your “ten-year” contract looks like it will take fifteen years at least.

That’s about right.

And everyone’s just okay with this lackadaisical schedule.

It seems so. One, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s not like Tor or I am losing money with this release schedule; we ran the numbers a while back and this contract’s been in the black for everyone involved for years now. Or to put it another way, hey, remember last year, when I got a ten-book extension to the already existing contract?

Yes, I do, you woke me up for that one, too.

Sorry.

No you’re not.

Anyway, my point in mentioning that is that we’ve done well enough on the first contract that we’re pretty sure Tor’s already in the black for what they’ll owe me for the extension.

So they got you for cheap, is what you’re saying.

That’s not what I’m saying.

Discount Scalzi.

No.

Half-Price Hugo Winner.

No.

By Grabthar’s Hammer, what a savings.

Stop that.

I promise nothing.

Fine. They’re not getting me for cheap, I assure you. I will be buying whatever questionable guitar I like for some time to come. What they are getting, and by design, is a pretty safe bet. I sell decently out of the gate and extremely well in the backlist and it’s all set up so none of us is reliant on a single book being “make or break” for the whole enterprise. There’s flexibility and margin, and in publishing, that’s a rare thing indeed. It’s a contract designed to weather storms, and these days, that’s an extremely good thing.

You’re talking about the whole “The US is currently run by a dickhead working very hard to destroy its economy and global standing” thing, aren’t you.

Not just about that, but certainly about that too, yes. I sell a lot of work to foreign markets and the current administration making the country look bad isn’t a great thing for any US-based author. It means I have to think about what and how I write — for example, whether I write books that take place in the US, as Starter Villain and (largely) When the Moon Hits Your Eye do. It may be that for the next four years at least, I spend more time in space, and in futures where the current administrative fuckery will be less of a drag on my potential sales. We will see what happens! The nice thing, however, is that we — me and Tor — can plan and prepare as well as anyone can for what the (immediate) future brings.

Hey, a decade ago, weren’t there a bunch of dudes who were furious about your deal, or arguing you could have done better for yourself, or that you should have self-published, or whatever?

There were!

Man, what even happened to them?

I suspect at least some of them are asking themselves the same question. In a general sense, it’s possible that they should have spent more time focusing on their own careers and work, and less time focusing on the careers and work of other people.

If you could go back in time to 2015, would you sign the same contract again?

Pretty much? I understand this sort of contract is not for everyone; not everyone wants to know what they’re doing professionally, and who with, for a decade or more, or wants the pressure of being on the hook for multiple unwritten books. But as for me, back then, I was pretty sure in a decade I would still want to be writing novels, and I would want to be doing it with people and a publisher who were all in for my work. Turns out, I nailed that prediction pretty well. And from a financial and career point of view I can’t say that it hasn’t benefitted me tremendously.

Now, to be clear, other writers have sold more than me, or gotten bigger advances than I have, or have won more awards than me, in the ten years since that contract made the news. But I’ve sold enough, been paid enough, and have been awarded enough to make me happy and then some. I’m happy with the work I’ve done in this last decade. I’m happy with how it’s been received. I’m happy with where I am with my career and life. Much of that is because of this contract. So, yeah, I would do it again. I kind of did, last year, when I signed that ten-book extension.

With that extension you’ll be writing until 2040 or so.

Barring death or significant brain injury, yes, probably.

What will you do then?

I’ll be 70 then. I have no idea what 70-year-old me will want, except possibly a nap. Ask me then.

Do I have to?

I mean, you’re my fictional interlocutor, you literally have no other function, so, yeah, probably.

Ugh, fine.

That’s the spirit.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/05/24/about-that-deal-ten-years-on/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=55778