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In a shocking development, bestselling author Janet Evanovich is leaving St. Martin’s Press after 15 years. The publisher refused to pay her request for $50 million for her next four books — so now her son/agent Peter Evanovich is expected to shop the deal to other publishers shortly. I’m told Evanovich is St. Martin’s biggest fiction author, best known for her novel series about bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. Katherine Heigl will play her in One for the Money, a Julie Anne Robinson-directed film for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Lakeshore that Lionsgate will distribute.
The St. Martin’s Press decision is the way that publishing business is going these days, with houses crunching the bottom line and not giving the kind of advances to franchise authors that were commonplace five years ago. Still, publishing industry insiders said Evanovich’s ask was on the high side, despite her bestselling track record. Her latest novel, Sizzling Sixteen, has been near the top of the bestseller lists since its publication earlier this summer. Evanovich’s longtime St. Martin’s editor, Jennifer Enderlin, said, “I’m not commenting on anything.”
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Good for St. Martin’s Press for saying no to unbridled greed. The days of more-more-more are over. What we are seeing is the ‘talent’ bubble bursting. Maybe with the money saved, a few undiscovered promising writers will have the opportunity to see print.
Evanovich is a dum dum if she doesn’t publish direct to Amazon, Lulu or Barnes and Noble. Why should she settle for 15 cents on the dollar when she can get 85 self publishing? More and more big authors are wising up and releasing direct to the masses, skipping the old musty publishing house entirely.
Name one big author who has ‘skipped the old musty publishing house.’
Stephen King, Daan Koontz, Paul Wilson, Neil Gaiman….
You’re the idiot.
Publishers are finished due to the technology.
Movie studios are next.
Anon, was it really neccessary to call the other poster an idiot? As for publishers and movie studios going the way of the DooDoo Bird, I’m not sure. I think they’ll find new business models.
As for me, I prefer to read books in a paper format rather than a virtual one. I, for one, would be not willing to use my printer, ink jets and paper to print a book that is electronically delivered. If I did, that means that that I would bear the cost for the intellectual property (the content) and the production (printing the book) separately. I think that would make buying a book more costly.
Dyan, not sure what you’re referencing, but Amazon now prints books, it doesn’t just sell digital versions for download. It is essentially print on demand on steroids, coupled to Amazon’s huge existing customer base for books. What will keep people like Janet E. from going with them is their belief that everyone will be best served if books cost less than $10. Some premier authors don’t share that belief, and, indeed, sometimes there are exceptions. But $10 is just about what you spend for an acceptable lunch in many places. Pricing books at that level has got to mean more people buying books. A lot of folks hesitate to buy anything but a college textbook at some of the prices now posted on new releases in bookstores. When it gets up past $25, you tend to stop and think. $10, not so much.
Stephen King did it. So did Peter S. Beagle. There are one or two others; I’m not near my books, so I can’t recall off the top of my head.
Old musty publishing houses are the only way to get print books stocked on bookstore shelves in the quantities necessary. Print on Demand technology couldn’t handle the capacity, and without print sales you’d be cutting off most of your revenue.
Cutting out the publisher and being a best-seller is a fantasy of people who can’t land a publication deal, and don’t know anything about publishing.
WOW. If St. Martin’s relents and pays, or if another publisher relents and pays, other best-selling authors might want to get on her bandwagon and make the same demands of their publishers. Big decisions to make for all concerned.
Dominos anyone?
50 mil? Excuse me? Check out this list of Evanovich ‘readalikes’ – most of them are better than JE and many have sadly gone out of print. Bet St. M’s could revive any one for a fraction. My personal votes go to Henderson, Isaacs and Rubino (my fave for Jersey sassy) or one who didnt make the list Casey Jones by Katy Munger.
http://www.webrary.org/rs/flbklists/Janet.html
This is a no brainer. Hate it for St. Martin’s but they made lots of money off Janet, and though it’s a loss for Enderlin, I’m betting she’s got new talent ready to fill those big shoes. I wish Janet the best, but I happen to know an author who signed with St. Martin’s who has a great chick lit meets paranormal series on the way (Darynda Jones). When a door shuts, there’s always a window that opens and the person on the other side won’t be asking for 50 million in a crappy economy. St. Martin’s will survive and may find they got the best end of the deal.
While Ms. Evanovich certainly has a track record worthy of top pay, her request wreaks of a disconnect from reality. With private book stores hanging by a thread and the big boys (Borders & Barnes and Noble) hanging by a similar thread…what was she thinking? Unless, of course, she actively wanted out. Greed can do weird things to people.
Katherine Heigl?! She is a terrible choice to play Stephanie Plum.
Been wondering ever since her son took over as her business mgr/agent what would happen.Her books since Twelve Sharp, which got her her last big payoff, have seriously gone downhill. The only one I personally purchased after book 12 was Plum Lovin’ and that was because I had been so entertained by Twelve Sharp.
It will certainly be interesting to see where she goes.
First news breaks that the Plum movie is going straight to DVD and now this. Poor Evanovich can’t catch a break! LOL. I’m kidding, I don’t feel sorry for her at all. $50,000,000? Was she smoking crack? Was this a ploy for attention? It’s so funny, because my friend and I just finished reading her latest book, and we both agreed it read as though she was putting in minimal effort, like she was flipping burgers for minimum wage. If her last four books are what you get for $40M, I’d hate to see what $50M would get you!
There’s a huge thread on Amazon about how her daughter and her assistant have been nothing to rude to the readers writing in to point out obvious mistakes. The book jacket copy doesn’t match what’s in the book, the book appears unfinished, etc. A lot of people are upset and Evanovich’s rep had the gall to say they get all kinds of positive male from their website so they don’t care what people are saying. One person even said they had been accused of being “out to get” Janet. I guess her publisher is out to get her too LOL.
I loved these books and I’m sad to see how arrogant she’s gotten. $50 MILLION DOLLARS? I still can’t wrap my head around it. IMO she needs to get an agent and a manager, people who call her Mrs. Evanovich and not mommy and start acting like a professional again. What an ungrateful wench.
And from the comments…
Evanovich self-publishing? There’s a scary thought. Her latest works are already amateurish, causing many to speculate that she’s passed the torch to her daughter (monkeys and midgets, anyone?). If she were to go the self-publishing route….yes, I shudder to think. I don’t disagree that self-publishing can be a good thing for SOME people, but IMO, Evanovich needs more professional input, not less. After all, how many high-quality Kindle books have you purchased where a heroine “died” her hair while wearing a “Channel” jacket, drinking a “bear” while her mother “Helen/Ellen” mentally “striped” some guy with a scar on his left right left eyebrow at the “barn”? It’s a wonder that woman’s editor hasn’t hanged herself already.
Wow.
That takes a pair.
Her last few books have gotten pretty poor reviews, and critics say she’s lost her touch. I would say it was a pretty good business decision for St. Martin’s.
Good for St. Martin’s for turning down JE’s greedy demands. The Plum series has gone to hell after the 12th book and she’s lost a lot of her fans respect with the last four books she’s put out. When an author loses respect for her characters, the way JE obviously has, its time to get a clue. I wouldn’t shell out ten dollars for one of her books now. Sure glad St. Martin’s isn’t willing to shell out 50 million for her sub par drivel.
I’m not surprised she asked for so much seeing as how she’s supporting her whole family. Her books may be “bestsellers” but I think that is based purely on fan based purchases. The quality of her writing has been waning; her last four Plum novels have only garnered mediocre reviews at best. Maybe St. Martins sees the writing on the wall and fears it might actually lose money on the deal.
Well, maybe that makes room at St. Martin’s for me.
I had noticed a trened in the last 3 or 4 books where the solution to a subplot (like Ranger’s surveillance being compromised) was a “Deux ex Machina” of a character that hadn’t been properly introduced or even really involved in the story. Maybe it’s time for Joe and Stephanie to settle down, Granny Mazur to join Grandpa at that Great Buffet in the Sky and Lula to take over the bond agency.
Excuse me: “trend.”
Not that St. Martin’s would ever plow the $50 million into developing new authors, but for the amount of money they just saved on that hack Evanovich they could acquire, print, distribute, and advertise 200 other books, one or two of which would inevitably recoup for the others as well as generate income and foot traffic across the entire publishing food chain.
I was a big fan but no longer. Definitely gone downhill. Didn’t even get the last one so I won’t be getting 16. Wouldn’t surprise me if the daughter is writing them now, as monkeybutt suggested.
Add to that the fact that Heigl got the role (worst casting decision) and Stephanie Plum is now dead to me.
Oh, and $50M is beyond arrogant. She should have gone to self publishing back at book 4 or 5.
I’m sorry, but no author living today is worth $12.5M a book. President Obama will get between $12M and $20M for his book after his political career winds down. But how much will he write? Being an author is work. But to be fair in this case, I think it’s an example of an author as well as an “Off the charts” greedy publisher contributing to the 3 inch thick $12 (oh, sorry $11.99) paperback book that overpopulates most booksellers these days, and winds up being sold by the basket full at used book stores and on supermarket discount tables.
I won’t buy any title by any author from a publisher who overpays like this, and then asks the reading public to pick up the tab in the long run. I wouldn’t do it for Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, or Leigh Brackett so I’m certainly not going to do it for this gal. Let her shop for her millions, or if she wants to know how popular she really is, let her put her works up on a web site, and let the readers pay whatever they think the books are worth directly to her. Yeah. Yeah, I know contracts and all that, but if she can dream of getting $12.5M for ponderous tomes of dead trees, I can dream for nothing about something that would be just and fair to the readers whose money she dreams of collecting.
AMAZING…TRULY AMAZING. If JE doesn’t get the $50 mm contract, and let’s say she gets $20 million–where do you think that $30 million difference will go?
You think it will lower book prices? NOT A CHANCE.
You think it will help St. Martins give new authors more deals? NOT A CHANCE.
That $30 million saved by St. Martins will go to one of two places: 1) a billionaire’s pocket or 2) into corporate profits/dividends and eventually into some hedge fund fat cats’ pockets.
So for all of you commenting here that JE doesn’t deserve $50 million, congratulations! You are rooting for the billionaires and wall street fat cats to get richer. That makes a lot of sense–just like it makes sense to root for the casino in black jack.
JE is you. It’s your son, it’s your daughter. You should be rooting for her to get as much as possible. Basic economics…
JE is not me. I take pride in my work and do it to the best of my ability. I do not wing it, turn it in late, or leave it unfinished because “people will buy it anyway.” She is also not my sister, not my brother, not my son, daughter, or friend. They all treat people with respect, regardless of their bottom line. The closest acquaintance I can think of that would be one of the selfish, spoiled, airheaded cheerleaders I went to high school with, only that doesn’t seem fair, either, because the cheerleader did her own stunts.
In your post, you imply that rooting for Evanovich is rooting for the little guy and rooting against corporate America. I can’t do that. This situation is eerily similar to the end of Animal Farm for me–I can’t tell the pigs from the humans, they’re so very much alike. Let me ask you something, econ. What do you think she’s going to do with FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS? Write with it? Get real. All the greedy, self-serving, megalomaniacal injustices you feel have been carried out by the billionaire fat cats? Evanovich is doing them, too, at the expense of anyone who buys her product. At this point, she’s no more human than Verizon is, and she’ll be the first one to tell you, she is a business, a brand, and only in it for the money. SMP, in this instance, is the lesser of two devils.
So you’re saying that JE’s previous $40 mil contract doesn’t make her a fat cat?
No, Econ 101, Janet Evanovich is NOT me, she is one of the super-rich who have zero connection to ordinary people like me. Good for St. Martins for standing up to this outrageous demand. She can’t support her family on ten million per book? Don’t expect me to feel sorry for her when millions of people are unemployed. Sizzling Sixteen wasn’t quite as awful as the 14th and 15th novels, but that isn’t a very high standard. I don’t care if the price of books doesn’t drop, I care about getting my money’s worth when I buy. And I don’t think she deserves that kind of money for the junk this series has become.
Karen, I agree with you.
To Econ 101, JE was paid $10 million per book for books 13-16 of the Plum series, all of which were pale imitations of books 1-12. (The books that made her reputation and enabled her to get the $40 million contract.) Was it arrogance on her part to think that she could offer her readers just anything and think that they would be satisfied or a was it creative slump? Who knows?
IF JE were to receive $12.5 million for the next 4 books, I shudder to think what she would produce, given the content of Books 13-16. More monkeys and hobbits? I think that SMP saw the handwriting on the wall and was smart to call it quits.
If JE was still producing good stories, I would say that $12.5 million per book would be justifiable, but she’s not.
Thanks for the insight. With sales figures like that, why even bother with an advance? Why not take a smaller advance and negotiate a higher royalty rate? Perhaps then she would once again be motivated to write books that sell themselves, instead of living under the mantra of “I’ve already gotten paid, so I don’t care.” After all, a kid who’s saving up his allowance for an expensive toy is more likely to do his chores than one who threw a fit until he got an advance on his allowance.
@ 12.5million per book and assuming St. Martin’s Press brings in about $13 per book in revenue they would have to sell 962,000 books just to pay out the author advance – not even including all the other “fat cats” at St. Martin’s who need to be paid….the printers the editor, the marketing and admin staffs and the shareholders of the company etc
From what I can see Book 14 sold 1,058,427, Book 15 sold 977,178 and the jury is still out on 16 but the numbers are certainly falling and the reviews are unenthusiastic at best.
“Basic Economics” (from a previous post) says to me that St. Martin’s Press just isn’t confident that Evanovich can sell enough books to warrant that kind of money. I’m betting they wish it were different. Given the sales reports from the last few books and the reviews from book 16, it is hard to blame them.
No 4 book deal is going to get a $50 million advance, that’s just ludicrous.
Publishing contracts have something called an “option” clause. This clause usually states that the publisher has the first opportunity to consider and offer for a book before the author is allowed to seek other offers. If the publisher and author cannot agree on terms for a new agreement, then the author is free to shop the book around to other publishers, only so long as they don’t accept a smaller offer than the original publisher.
My guess is that Janet doesn’t like her editor at SMP, or SMP’s business decisions. They may have rushed her to release more books more quickly which would explain the decline in quality, as the writer has had less time to write, and the editors have rushed it through the editorial process to get it out on the market.
By asking for $50 million dollars, she may as well have been asking for a trillion, she just wanted to leave SMP, and needed an excuse not to accept the terms they offered (which were probably in the high millions, and will be hard for another publisher to match or surpass).
Rest assured, however, she will not be getting anywhere close to $50 million as an advance from any other publisher.
I have no idea what JE is thinking. i have seen her speak twice, once at the beginning of her career and once a few years ago. She was humble and funny and really grateful for her success.
Guess that’s over.
I just finished 15. I was really so disappointed after waiting so long for it. I wouldn’t be surprised that someone else ghosts her books now. the charm and the laughs are gone and the stories are repetitive. JE has obviously stopped reading her reviews and press which is dangerous. Maybe her website fans only post positive things or maybe her daughter filters them. But her work isn’t worth 50 mil anymore and I hope no publisher gives her such a deal. then maybe she will wake up and go back to writing the wonderful books I have turned so many people on to and they in turn pass it along.
I used to be a Janet E. fan. I stopped around Book 8, when her writing got boring and I realized Stephanie Plum would never evolve as a character. She’s resting on her laurels, and many readers share my opinion. Shame on her. Shame on us for buying her books. Shame on St. Martins for encouraging her to keep writing the series, rather than end on a high note (Say… 10 books?)My message to everyone – the horse is dead. Stop flogging it.
I became a fan of JE almost 2 years ago. I’ve read the books, loved the characters, and even became a bit obsessed. Books 1 – 12 were great. 13 was ok, but didn’t make sense after 12. 14 was the worst. 15 was ok. And, 16 was getting closer to the older ones, but it still didn’t make sense that Steph was still in the same rut that she’s been hating since 11. And, JE just ignores what fans say about her newest work. Don’t forget that her daughter runs the website and store. I’m glad St. Martins won’t give in. But, I would like to see at least one more book to end the series on a positive note.
K. Heigl – WORST casting decision ever! She is the worst actress this side of Jennifer Aniston. And like Aniston, seems to think she will be a major movie star. yuck.
Wasn’t there talk way back when about Michelle Phieffer playing Plum? She really isn’t the right age anymore, but there a million others besides Heigl. Who is going to play Joe and Ranger, two of the Jonas brothers? double yuck.
We should be rooting for JE to get $50M?
She is us?
No, her thinking is why new authors get an advance of $5,000 instead of $20,000 and get $0 in the marketing budget.
I opted out of buying her latest book, being bored with her characters. If I wouldn’t pay $15 for that, I wouldn’t encourage St. Martins to pay $50 mil for her next four.