Earlier this week it was revealed that Amy Schumer landed a book deal with Simon & Schuster that’s reportedly in the $8-10 million range, and The New York Times points out that the massive deal is actually not Schumer’s first – she also landed a $1 million deal with HarperCollins back in 2013 but ultimately canceled it after the premiere of Inside Amy Schumer:
The book’s early drafts lacked a clear narrative structure, so Ms. Marx was brought in to polish the essays, according to several people. Over the next year, as Ms. Schumer’s career accelerated, little new progress was made on the book. In the spring of 2014, Mr. Hirshey and Ms. Marx requested a meeting to go over the edits. Ms. Gendell delivered bad news: Ms. Schumer was too busy and wanted to cancel the contract. She returned her advance with interest. Ms. Gendell stepped aside as her agent. In an interview with GQ in July, Ms. Schumer noted that she was writing a book of “dark” autobiographical essays and alluded to the canceled contract, saying, “I had a whole deal, but I decided to wait — I thought I would make more money if I waited.”
And that’s exactly what happened – the difference between a $1 million and $8+ million deal is obviously a huge one – and Schumer’s deal has raised the bar for how much cash publishers are willing to throw at comedians going forward following deals with stars like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, B.J. Novak, Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham, and Aziz Ansari, who was reportedly paid around $3.5 million for Modern Romance. “For years now, every agent in town would use the Tina Fey advance as the benchmark for what their celebrity client was worth,” HarperCollins president Michael Morrison told NYT on the news. “Now the bar is sitting atop Amy’s head. I can’t tell you how frustrating those conversations will be for us all.”
