This is part of a series on advances for authors. Today we’ll look at YA or young adult books.

The average advance for an author of a YA title in 2011 was $120,000. The averages were derived from information gathered on books released by the then Big Six, now the Big Five, the top publishers in the U.S. and the world.

This trend is very interesting considering the history of publishing in general. In 2003, the industry hit a strong downturn. In 2008, there was another downturn due to the general economic deterioration in the U.S. in general. The 2008 advances in this category were at $120,000 then and held steady through the worst of the economic troubles. In most other categories, advances dropped.

In 2013, advances had not seen much movement from this figure. However, when you add in advances for YA authors from a variety of publishers (not just the Big Five), the average is about $75,000. Still a healthy and respectable advance for most authors.

These figures are for single-book deals, where the work is not part of a series. Multi-book deals industry wide garner advances of about $64,000 per book…so if two books are bought, the average is about $126,000; for three books, it is $190,000.

Typical royalty rates match those seen for adult projects, ranging between 7% and 12.5% depending on whether the offering is a first book, previous sales record, and how the break points are manipulated (the rise in royalties paid as the number of books sold rises).