It's Official: Hocking Signs with SMP

The New York Times announced this morning that Amanda Hocking has officially been snapped up by St. Martin's Press, an imprint of Macmillan (my first publishing home, but that's neither here nor there haha). The deal occurred after a heated auction (with a number of the Big 6 publishers, I might add) sky-rocketed the bids into the 7 figures.

The final result? A four-book deal for $2 million, reports Julie Bosman from the NYT:

Amanda Hocking, the 26-year-old author who shot to fame by selling more than one million copies of her self-published books, has signed up with a traditional publisher for her next series.

St. Martin’s Press, part of Macmillan, will publish Ms. Hocking’s “Watersong” series, four books in the young-adult paranormal genre.

A heated auction for the rights to publish her books began early last week, and several major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, dropped out as the price climbed into the seven figures.

The bidding eventually rose beyond $2 million for world English rights, said one publishing executive familiar with the negotiations. (St. Martin’s declined to comment.) Ms. Hocking was represented by the literary agent Steven Axelrod.

The first book in the series will be released in fall 2012, a spokeswoman for St. Martin’s said.

Ms. Hocking, who lives in Austin, Minn., began self-publishing her books last year, selling them through online retailers like Amazon.com and BN.com. In doing so, she became a reluctant spokeswoman for the practice of self-publishing, which allows authors to sell their books directly to readers without the help of a traditional publisher.

Writing on her blog on Tuesday, the day after it was reported that Ms. Hocking was shopping her series to traditional publishers, she explained herself to her readers.

“I want to be a writer,” she said. “I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full time corporation.”

See the original post HERE

SMP Shoots Down Evanovich's $50 Million "Idea"

This just in...

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:

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

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...