St. Martin's Press has just let their biggest fiction author become a free agent--Janet Evanovich.
According to deadline.com, Evanovich's requested $50 million advance was just too steep for the last privately owned major trade publisher to accept:
I don't blame SMP for a second for not acquiescing to Evanovich's request. Word on the street is her last contract, with previous representation at Trident Media Group, ended up at $13 mil. Quite the jump she wants there! Sure, she's a bestselling author time and time again, but if the numbers don't work and they don't meet their margins with that hefty of an advance, they should let her go. I sure would've loved to get a look at those P&Ls though...
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."See the article HERE
