Auctions and pre-empts

We’ve all heard about those book auctions which literary agents set up, where, the idea is, publishers will vie with one another in offering ever more favorable terms in order to sign up a hot property. They generally take place before the book is written, so involve a belief by the publisher that the author can indeed deliver a manuscript which matches the hype put out by the agent. The agent’s hope is that the excitement of the whole thing will drive the advance offered by the winning publisher up to incredible levels. And often it does. No doubt if you’re sitting there, confident in your ability to sell 10,000 copies which might allow you to offer an advance on royalties of $20,000 or $30,000, and you hear the opposition going to $40,000, it must be difficult to avoid the thought that if they think they can sell more than 10,000 maybe your sales forecast has been a bit too conservative, or that the selling price might be able to be a bit higher, and of course that the world needs…