Checkbooks too scary for horror writer
John Saul
By Jay
MacDonald • Bankrate.com
Bankrate: Most people
don't appreciate what an achievement it was for a paperback original
to make The New York Times' bestseller list.
John Saul: Yes, it
was the first paperback to be advertised on network television and
the first paperback original to ever make the list. Fortunately
for me, the publisher still ran Dell outright at that time and she
could do anything she wanted. No committee could have ever made
that decision, but she didn't need a committee, it was her company.
It couldn't be done that way anymore. There is no one person in
publishing who has the power to try something like that anymore.
Bankrate: What effect
did overnight success have on you?
John Saul: First off,
it meant that I could ride in the front of the airplane, which I
really appreciated because I discovered that most of my fear of
flying was claustrophobia. I just didn't like flying at all. When
I started riding in the front of the plane, it became a lot more
bearable. And I could buy premium liquor and good wine and I could
use all the paper towels I wanted. Those are the three major things
I remember.
Bankrate: Were you
prepared to handle the money?
John Saul: No, no.
That was a jolt, a major jolt, when suddenly what I was spending
every month on basic living was twice as much as my annual income
had ever been before. It was kind of a shock.
Bankrate: What did
you do?
John Saul: I hired
someone to pay the bills because I became emotionally incapable
of writing the checks.
Bankrate: Did you understand
how an author gets paid?
John Saul: Not really.
Had I known then what I knew the following month, I probably would
have stopped trying. I mean, when you consider that the average
advance on a novel is still around $5,000 and that there are only
probably less than 100 authors in the country who are actually living
on the proceeds of their writing, it's pretty scary odds. Fortunately,
everything came together; I was at the right place at the right
time with the right people with the right project. And I had written
enough books by then that when they asked me if I could produce
the book in a month, I was able to say yes and then actually do
it. It's not as though "Suffer the Children" was the first
book I'd ever written; it was just the first one that they liked.
Bankrate: Did you invest
your money, say, in stocks or real estate?
John Saul: Both, but
I've got managers who take care of all of that. I'm a dunce at that.
I buy the real estate and let other people buy the stocks. I don't
understand it. I don't understand how a percentage point here and
a percentage point there can be so important, but apparently it
is. Once I smartened up enough to let other people manage it, I
done way better! (laughs) Leave it to those who enjoy it and understand
it. All I know about money is it's nice to have enough so that if
you spend it you don't have to worry about it.
Bankrate: What advice
would you give young writers about money?
John Saul: Make damn
sure that you know when the next check is coming and that it is
coming, and don't spend the tax money. I know one author who spent
the tax money on the assumption that he was going to have another
bestseller and when he didn't, the IRS came and took everything
away from him one day. You have to be able to plan well and understand
that the checks don't come in regularly once a month and you don't
always know what size they're going to be. You certainly get to
a point, if you've had the level of success I've had, where you
have a pretty good idea what the base is going to be every year.
But in the early years, there was a lot of making certain that there
were ways to level out the cash flow. I mean, there were times when
I kept a running line of credit because every now and then you would
run short; they would move a publication date and that would move
a check. You just have to sort it all out. It's a shifty world.
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