On Publishing Auctions

... and a new announced deal that sold (you guessed it) at auction!

Good morning! It’s another good day to announce another deal—this time for my incredibly talented powerhouse of a client (and overall stellar human) Alex Ritany.

Super brief story on Alex—they had queried me, as one does from time to time, and at some point notified me of another agent offer. Naturally, I took a look at their pages quickly. Okay, they were jaw-droppingly good. I requested the full manuscript, and proceeded to read the book in, like, a day.

I cried. Guys, if y’all can make me cry, that’s pretty much a guaranteed offer of rep. Anyway, between Alex’s incredible writing, the high concept, the gorgeous and heart-aching message, I knew I wanted this book. Bad.

I won’t go into all the details, but suffice it to say that after our call (which went well over an hour, heh heh), I was like “I have no idea what’s going to happen but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get them.” At the time, I had no announced deals, and as a newer agent, I was pretty sure they would choose someone more established.

And then (obviously, I guess, heh heh), they chose me! I was truly floored. And so dang excited. I just… had a feeling. About this book. About this author.

I posted this on Instagram earlier, and it’s true:

I felt that auction potential in my bones, and I am SO happy that’s how it turned out!

So! On the note of auctions, I thought it would be fun to talk about publishing auctions—what they are, how they work, and some of the practical considerations involved other than the obvious one—money.

What is a publishing auction?

An auction happens when multiple publishers make offers on the same book. Pretty simple! One thing I’ll say up front is that, though you might hear ‘auction’ and imagine that everything goes into turbo speed … it doesn’t. Here’s a likely timeline:

• First offer comes in. Yay! At this point, to state the obvious, you won’t know if there will be any others.

• The agent emails all the editors still reading and says something like “Hi, we have an offer in hand for AMAZING BOOK by Amazing Author. Out of consideration for the offering party, we’re setting a deadline of 10 days from now for editors to either offer or express intent to offer”—or something like that, with a few more polite bells and whistles.

• Sometimes, interested parties will want to have a Zoom with the author (and agent) in advance of offering, to feel things out. So this period while you’re waiting to see if there are more offers, first, WILL be full of rejection (even if you end up going to auction, lots of people will step down), but beyond that it can be either kind of quiet, or crazy with Zoom calls! It’s actually a bit of a stressful time. You’d think it would be strictly happy, but … I find it’s very anxiety inducing for both my authors (and for me)! Think about it: naturally there are houses and editors that are more exciting than others, and especially if the initial offer comes from a house you’re not as excited about, it can make the nerves even worse. (Need to clarify—this was NOT the case with Alex’s book! I’m just speaking generally here.)

• There’s often an editor who needs more time, hee hee, which I do always try to give during this phase. We don’t want anyone to bow out based on a couple days’ difference!

This whole process from initial offer to start of auction can easily take around 2-3 weeks.

Once all offers (or intents to offer) have come in, it’s time to set auction rules.

The three ways to run an auction

In case of multiple offers (and if there hasn’t already been a pre-empt—an offer that’s big with a quick deadline to accept, geared towards avoiding an auction), the agent will decide (with author’s input) how to run the auction. There are three main kinds (and this post by Kristin Nelson is a great reference):

1. Round Robin - I haven’t run an auction like this yet, but the idea is that you go around and around, knocking out houses as you go that can’t compete as the numbers go up, until a final house is left. The main disadvantage, besides how time consuming this method is, is that if the author has a favorite house/editor, that party could get knocked out of the competition without the author having a say-so. In other words, the author doesn’t have as much control.

2. Best Bids - This is a short and sweet method—everyone presents their best bid by a certain deadline, and then the author chooses their preferred offer. The disadvantage here is the publishers go in “blind” (though you can set a monetary floor, for example, or “guide” the offers by including some of the author’s priorities in the auction rules, such as “these are not deal breakers, however the author would prefer to have a multi-book deal, and retain translation rights”—that kind of thing). My understanding is that editors really don’t like this kind of auction. The other huge disadvantage is that there’s no chance for the agent to get their hands dirty and negotiate any of the elements.

3. Two-Round Best Bids - This is (so far) my preferred method (though don’t hold me to it—I’m still new at this!). I’ve run two auctions like this so far. This allows editors to present their “first” best bid. Then, I get to mark up their offers with my red pen, hee hee, and ask for improvement, as well as indicating (without betraying the confidence of the other offers) where they might be lacking. Then, everyone gets the chance to present their second or final best bid. To me, this has a ‘best of all worlds’:

• The offering editors aren’t as ‘blind’ since I can guide them a bit prior to their second bid

• I get to negotiate all the things on all the offers, but especially the elements that my author cares about most

• The author retains control over the ultimate choice (unlike the round robin)

The biggest advantage of an auction: choice

There are lots of awesome things about auctions. It’s more prestigious—it catches people’s attention because, if people are competing over this book, it must be extra good, right? It also helps drive up advances, though there is still a huge range it could fall in (i.e., ‘auction’ doesn’t automatically mean six figures). It also can mean that editors are more willing to improve terms they’d otherwise hold firm on, such as subrights splits, or film rights, or … whatever.

In my mind, though, one of the biggest advantages of an auction, at least when run as a best bids or two-round best bids, is CHOICE. Prior to being in the business, I likely would have imagined it’s as simple as MONEY. In other words, why wouldn’t you go with the biggest $$ offer and call it a day?

But it’s not quite that simple when you’re in the weeds of it. There are SO many other elements for the author to consider.

• Editorial vision - Guys, editors sometimes have wildly different visions for where they want an author to take a book. How many words they want the author to cut. Etc etc. And when it’s your book, I promise you, you will care about this. Deeply. I’m not saying we’ve done this for either of my auctions, but I am saying, I understand why it could be better to go with a lower advance with an editor who aligns with the author’s vision.

• Prestige of the imprint / positioning on a list / marketing investment - Not all imprints have the same “name brand” recognition. This could be important to the author beyond the $$, not to mention if one of the imprints promises this will be a “lead title” for a certain season, or commits in writing to a certain amount of marketing dollars.

• Subrights - Subrights would include audio, foreign deals and translation, graphic novel adaptations, film, merchandising, etc.—in other words, all the “other” things the book can become besides the full version text in the original language. There can potentially be a lot of money to be made in subrights, and publishers know this. Obvi. They will always attempt to keep these, but during an auction, the competition can help them loosen their grip… sometimes. Or not. The point is, keeping those rights for the author to exploit (via their agent, of course) can be an important piece of the pie. Also, there are publishers who are very grabby not just with the rights but with percentages on these rights. This could be a deciding factor during an auction.

• Rights reversions - If a publisher insists on keeping subrights, an important question becomes—when does the author get those rights back? Not all publishers try hard with these rights, and what we don’t want is rights just “sitting” indefinitely and not being exploited or pushed. Another spoiler—there are houses and imprints who do not want to revert rights at all. Erm, ever. So it’s worth bringing up during an auction for sure! I always try to ask for 24 month rights reversion. Sometimes, we get it! Other times… no. Other times we’ll compromise at 36 months. But again, this can be something important to consider during an auction (and, I mean, with any offer).

• Other elements - this is where it’s important for the agent to know what the author cares about. Are they adamant about anti-AI language being included? Is it a deal breaker for them if the publisher won’t define/limit that contractually? Do they really want a 2-book deal—or perhaps they really don’t? This is where the agent/author communication during an auction is SO important. Alex and I hopped on the phone and texted many times as we discussed what their priorities were. Again, it’s not as straightforward as “money,” though money is 100% important and a big consideration.

This list isn’t isn’t exhaustive by any means—there are a lot of moving parts to publishing offers—but these are some of the biggies beyond the dollars and cents of it. Hopefully this gives you a better sense of what to expect should you find yourself in auction-land one day!

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What questions do you guy have about auctions? Drop them in the comments and I’ll do my best to respond!

In the meantime, take care of yourselves on this fine Tuesday!