About That (New) Deal | Whatever

(Checks Reactor to see if the news of my new multi-book, multi-year deal with Tor Books is up)

(It is)

Welp, time to wake up my fictional interlocutor.

(Nudges the fictional interlocutor with toe)

Nnngh. What is it?

I have need of your services.

Why?

Because of this:

What? You’ve signed another long-ass contract with Tor?

Yes.

Again?

Yes.

Already?

Evidently so.

Does this mean your current 13-book contract with them is done?

No. I’ve still got six books on that one.

… but now you’ve signed a contract for another ten books.

Yes.

When you’re barely halfway done with the first one.

That’s right.

Dude, I am so confused right now.

It’s simple, really. After The Kaiju Preservation Society was out in the world for a while, me and my team looked at how things were going, in terms of overall sales and income and presence in the market. And it turns out that things had been going really well. Of the five books Tor had put out since the 2015 contract started, four of them had been New York Times bestsellers, all had been optioned for film/TV, and there had been rather a few award nominations and wins. Equally significantly, through sales and directly-related income, I had earned a multiple of the up-front financial figure attached to the 2015 contract. My overall sales strongly suggested Tor had also recouped and then some. The extremely successful release of Starter Villain since then has only added to all of that.

But more than that, I felt (and feel!) very comfortable with the team at Tor. They’re some of the smartest people in the field of speculative fiction, and the savvy moves that the Tor Publishing Group have made in the last several years, from bringing in Devi Pillai as publisher to the establishment of imprints like Nightfire and Bramble, have made it one of the most exciting publishing houses in the world right now. There’s buzz and energy at Tor. I wanted to keep being part of it, and to keep adding to it.

So, just before Starter Villain came out, I and Tor started talking about extending that partnership further. We both knew we wanted to keep working with each other, and we both felt like now was the right time to figure out the details of that, so that there would be no “end of contract” anxiety on either side of the table. We hashed everything out in the first half of the year and since then have been waiting a bit for the right time to announce it. That’s today.

So you’re writing books on the 2015 contract and the new contract?

No, I’ll finish up the books on the current contract, and when that’s done the books on the new contract will start up. It’s sequential rather than simultaneous.

And you publish a novel a year.

More or less. Some years I’ll publish one or two, others I’ll publish none. It averages out to about one a year.

That means that when you’re out of contract you’ll be…

About seventy years old, yes.

I mean, holy crap, dude.

I agree it’s wild to think about. It’s possible this is the last book contract I will ever sign. Or, at the very least, it’s the last book contract I’ll ever need to sign.

Are you at all nervous about making a commitment of this length?

No. Bluntly, this is a gift. I know what I’m doing with my professional life for the next fifteen years at least, and I know I have the support of one of the best teams in publishing. And because both Tor and I are assured that my SF/F novel output stays at one house for what is likely to be the entire length of my publishing career (35 years!), we can do cool and creative things with the backlist in concert with new releases. This contract is about security and options, both for me and for Tor.

Well, and money.

I mean, yes, right, that too.

So, how much?

In terms of the advance, $300,000 per book. This is a bump up from the 2015 contract, although when you factor in inflation, etc, in real-world economic terms I suspect it’ll be somewhere near the same amount of upfront money.

You could have held out for more!

Maybe? But why? I’m not exactly starving at the moment, says the man who owns a church building and a six-necked guitar. Also, as with the 2015 contract, this isn’t about absolutely running up the score on advances. It’s about building and continuing a stable, predictable long-term relationship between me and Tor, with advantages for the both of us.

Since we are both in it for the long term, there is ample opportunity for both of us to make money through the entire life of the contract(s), as indeed we each have to this point. Both Tor and I are getting a good and fair deal here, and that is the best kind of deal: One where both partners are happy and working together in harmony, to, you know, make even more money.

What I’m saying is, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.

You’re not worried about having to write sixteen more novels?

In what way?

Coming up with ideas, for one.

I’m going to be honest with you, of all the things I worry about in this life, coming up with story ideas is not one of them. I mean, my next novel is about the moon turning to cheese. And it has what I think is some of my best writing yet. So, I think I’m going to be fine on the idea front.

Beyond that, I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that I like doing it, a lot. And while it’s fun to write other things – I’ve especially enjoyed doing screenplays for Love Death + Robots – I’m all right having those things be the side gigs to my main thing, writing novels. It’s nice to know that whatever else I do, I have a writing home to come back to.

Aren’t you worried about “Artificial Intelligence” coming to take your job?

Not until I am 70, at least.

On a less flip note, this is a good place to point out that one of the requirements of my new contract is that my books have to be worked on by actual live humans. My book covers will be made by humans, who will be paid for their work. Editorial work will be done by humans, who will likewise get paid. This is a meat shop, folks.

This doesn’t mean the humans can’t avail themselves of up-to-date technological tools; I do the same. But just as every word in my novels is contractually obliged to be written by me, a human with a brain and imagination, so are all the other aspects of the book-making experience now obliged to be the work of, you know, people. Please, other writers, also make this part of your contracts moving forward.

Hey, can you talk about audio for a sec?

Sure. The audio versions of my novels will continue to be handled by Audible, who have been an absolutely lovely partner to work with, and with whom I am delighted to continue my association.

Do you have anything you would like to say to readers and fans?

First, that they are the reason I get to continue to do this whole “writing novels” thing at all, so really, I thank each of them from the bottom of my heart. Second, if they are ever wondering if I have another novel coming out soon, all they have to do is ask themselves: Is John Scalzi alive, and is it a year before 2039? If the answer to both these questions is “yes,” then yes, I will have another novel out soon.

Do you have anything you would like to say to haters and detractors?

Bwa ha ha hah ha! Sorry, dudes. I’ll be around.

You should probably thank some people now.

Absolutely: First, my agent Ethan Ellenberg, who spearheaded the negotiations on our end and as always did a terrific job at it. At Tor, my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden and my publisher Devi Pillai, who agreed that we should all be in business for a long time yet, and Alexis Saarela and Sarah Reidy in Tor’s PR department, who picked the right time to tell the world about this. Also Bella Pagan and Michael Beale at Tor UK, who have been fantastic through the whole process. And, naturally, my wife Kristine, who is generally awesome and specifically was my early sounding board about committing to an even-longer-term deal with my publisher.

So, shouldn’t you be writing a book right now?

No, right now I’m on summer vacation, and am heading to Oslo and Glasgow. But when I get back from Worldcon in a couple of weeks? Yes. Then I’ll be writing a book.

Cool. Are we done? I’d like to get back to my nap now.

Yes, sleep well, fictional interlocutor!

Nnngh.