Don’t Judge a Book by Its Advance

If your social media algorithms think you care about books, you could be forgiven for believing it’s a buoyant time in American fiction. Seemingly every week there’s news of a first-time author scoring a big advance. In just the past few months, the over-$500,000-advance club has welcomed journalist Charlotte Runcie’s Bring the House Down (in which a theater critic files a career-ending review of an actress he’s slept with), Stegner Fellow Jemima James Wei’s The Original Daughter (about two competitive sisters), and climate reporter Emma Pattee’s Animal Sounds (set in Portland, Oregon, after a catastrophic earthquake), among others.