Dan & Phil Part 98: forever home!!1!!!

[Levitating]

I hadn't notice it!

Maybe Dan's book also helped him connecting more with his own mental health! Great thing either way

[shan]

oof, been there. not with window cleaner but just waving at people who i think are waving at me and then they're not. uuuugh

I have an actual phobia of long corridors after one too many times saying hi back to someone talking to the person behind me. And that awkward feeling of where do you look when someone you only kinda know at work is at the opposite end of the hallway and you're walking towards each other but are too far away to say hi... It's nightmare fuel for me. Long corridors should honestly be illegal, they discriminate against the socially anxious.

[starsandshards]

or the weird tight-lipped smile you have to give when you don't really know someone well enough? SOCIAL STUFF IS SO AWKWARD i hate it

[noodlebum]

Bumping into someone when food shopping, then carrying on bumping into them all the way round the shop and awkwardly acknowledging each other over and over

[ukhon]

As someone with anxiety I definitely can see traits of it in Phil, specifically to do with his health too. Obviously it wouldn’t change anything if he did have it I just hope he’s doing okay

[oriharakaoru]

Bumping into someone when food shopping, then carrying on bumping into them all the way round the shop and awkwardly acknowledging each other over and over

god, i like, try to actively avoid them after i've bumped into them the first time. and absolutely get in the check-out line that's furthest away.

[IvyLane]

does dan suddenly have a lisp or am i hearing things?

i wondered this! but i just think his mic is a bit eh.

I immediately thought "Did Dan get a tongue ring or something?" He's definitely lisping a lot in this one!

[mitsleo]

Dan's teeth have been looking a lot straighter, so he might be wearing his retainers ig?!

[fruitcriminals]

oof, been there. not with window cleaner but just waving at people who i think are waving at me and then they're not. uuuugh

I have an actual phobia of long corridors after one too many times saying hi back to someone talking to the person behind me. And that awkward feeling of where do you look when someone you only kinda know at work is at the opposite end of the hallway and you're walking towards each other but are too far away to say hi... It's nightmare fuel for me. Long corridors should honestly be illegal, they discriminate against the socially anxious.

I don't even have social anxiety but I hate corridors, they are the absolute worst. Long office corridors should 100% be banned.

I have to approach these work corridors by always initiating the conversation now, even if it's just to say nice tie or that their file folder is a nice colour, because when I don't have a plan, I end up being so weird. One time I just assumed someone had said 'hi how are you' as people normally do (they hadn't) so I just replied to nothing and said 'good thanks, you?' and they were so confused and I wanted to dissolve into the floor.

[fruitcriminals]

On a tangent. I hope that in this new house they get a pantry or at least a floor to ceiling kitchen cupboard and a costco membership so it can be wall to wall cereal and snacks and they can bicker about who waters the plants instead.

This may also be because I would love a pantry and a pantry tour video with a tier list of Phil's fave snacks.

[oriharakaoru]

just out of curiosity, does anyone know how many books they sold for tabinof or dapgo? or what the advances were like for those? i'm currently down a book publishing rabbit hole and it doesn't seem like authors get paid a whole heck of a lot. unless you sell millions of copies, of course.

in a cursory search, it looks like advances are between $5000 US for a first book and then this dude got like £12,000 for his book (https://www.theguardian.com/books/books ... al-finance). then like 10% of net sales after that (which you have to pay back your advance first).

it just seems wild to me that, potentially, dan made more money doing two 45 min stereo shows last week than he got as an advance for his book!

[rizzo]

I love this man. That is all.

[inanerat]

Piano content?? who is this man????

I was also just listening to Origin of Symmetry the other day lol. And the beat drop does sound like difficult hell, but the pattern is then repeated a lot, so at least once you get it down it shouldn't be too bad.

[soveinco]

just out of curiosity, does anyone know how many books they sold for tabinof or dapgo? or what the advances were like for those? i'm currently down a book publishing rabbit hole and it doesn't seem like authors get paid a whole heck of a lot. unless you sell millions of copies, of course.

in a cursory search, it looks like advances are between $5000 US for a first book and then this dude got like £12,000 for his book (https://www.theguardian.com/books/books ... al-finance). then like 10% of net sales after that (which you have to pay back your advance first).

it just seems wild to me that, potentially, dan made more money doing two 45 min stereo shows last week than he got as an advance for his book!

(Disclaimer: I'm in publishing, but I'm not an editor and I don't work in sales or contracts, so I have some info from our general database, but not as much info as you guys would like. Sorry!)

I can look up the inventory numbers for the US editions only (I'm sure it did quite well in the UK and worldwide as well, lol):

TABINOF: 414,563 net copies sold since 2015 (that means minus returns)
DAPGO: 138,001 net copies sold since 2016 (again, minus returns)

However, because I don't have access to how much their advances were OR how much it costs to print each copy of the book (and they're both hardcover, four-color books on nice thick paper, so it ain't cheap!!), this doesn't actually tell us how much money they have made. Though I would guess that even if they had a pretty high advance, with that many copies sold, they've probably earned out by now and do make royalties.

But the initial print run (meaning, how many copies they printed when it first went on sale) for TABINOF was 175,000; that is very high, esp. for first-time authors, which tells us that the publisher was EXPECTING the book to do well, put in lots of marketing money to make sure it would sell, etc. (So, that implies to me that Dan and Phil probably got a pretty good advance, higher than what you quoted. Though, again, not in editorial, so I don't have a great sense of the range myself. But I do know it can vary RIDICULOUSLY depending on how much the publisher wants to do the book, how well they think it will sell based on similar titles and who the authors are, etc.)

But overall, no, it would not surprise me at all if they make more money in a few stereo shows than from their books. Honestly, with the exception of repeated best-sellers like John Green, publishing is not really an industry where many people make lots of money. Editing, designing, proofreading, printing, SHIPPING (oh god, the shipping issues we've had this year) books takes a huge amount of money and the profit margins on books are often pretty damn slim. Fancy, important, expensive books often don't make a profit at all, and are subsidized by imprints like mine (kids mass market) where we make lots of books that sell well, very cheaply, with work-for-hire authors.

Career-wise, I would guess it was more about the creative challenge, the opportunity to develop their careers, etc. They can both say they're NYT best-selling authors now, for example, which looks good for any future career stuff they do. (I'm sure those high sales numbers for TABINOF are reflected in a commensurately higher advance for Dan negociated by his agent when they did the contract for YWGTTN, as well.)

Sidenote, I think I remember them saying (maybe in one of Phil's Draw My Life videos?) that they put all the money from the book advance into bankrolling the tour . . . gusty move, boys!

[soveinco]

Oh, and of course, besides the career stuff I speculate on above, Dan and Phil told us back in the announcement video what their main reason for wanting to make a traditional, physical book was:

Phil: So, what's our story? Why did we decide to make a book, and why together?
Dan: Our book story began about a year ago. We were thinking about "Dan and Phil," not ourselves, but specifically this world of "Dan and Phil" that we've created here on YouTube, all of these videos and shows and events and memories that we have shared with each other and you guys, who have been with us since 2009 all the way to this year 2015, and . . . it was all an accident!
Phil: It was!
Dan: Literally none of this could have ever existed, but it DOES, and it is really special to us.
Phil: Yes.
Dan: And we hope for you guys too. And we just wanted to think of a way to preserve it, because you never know what could happen! Like, YouTube could get deleted, a meteor could crash into our house and kill one of us . . .
Phil: Don't tempt fate, Dan!
Dan: What, don't tempt fate? Don't tempt a meteor to fly through the window and kill one of us?
Phil: You never know!
Dan: So more than just videos and things floating around the internet, we wanted to make something, something physical, something real, that you can have and hold and to remind you of all of these good times and to prove that once there were these two guys called Dan and Phil who met each other on the internet and created this entire world.
Phil: OK, Dan, stop, 'cause everyone's going to cry, including me.

(Correct, I am crying rn. They both look so f'ing emotional in that video, and Phil really does look like he's about to lose it there at the end. They wanted permanent proof of what they'd made together, in the most stable form of media that humanity has yet come up with, short of the stone tablet, that wouldn't be vulnerable to data loss, because once it's printed, it's OUT THERE, BABY!)

[lefthandedism]

On a tangent. I hope that in this new house they get a pantry or at least a floor to ceiling kitchen cupboard and a costco membership so it can be wall to wall cereal and snacks and they can bicker about who waters the plants instead.

This may also be because I would love a pantry and a pantry tour video with a tier list of Phil's fave snacks.

Well, if we're going to fantasize, I'd love it if they grew away from boxed cereals, which are no more nutritious than snacks (with maybe a few added vitamins), and ate more wholesome food for breakfast, but maybe that's not a popular opinion

But a pantry tour would be perfect Phil content, and wouldn't reveal anything particular about their new house.

[fruitcriminals]

On a tangent. I hope that in this new house they get a pantry or at least a floor to ceiling kitchen cupboard and a costco membership so it can be wall to wall cereal and snacks and they can bicker about who waters the plants instead.

This may also be because I would love a pantry and a pantry tour video with a tier list of Phil's fave snacks.

Well, if we're going to fantasize, I'd love it if they grew away from boxed cereals, which are no more nutritious than snacks (with maybe a few added vitamins), and ate more wholesome food for breakfast, but maybe that's not a popular opinion

But a pantry tour would be perfect Phil content, and wouldn't reveal anything particular about their new house.

Hahaha to be fair I am being incredibly selfish My oh is having his mid life crisis health kick at the moment as we still can't go to the gym and the most enjoyable thing in my kitchen is a protein bar, and it's not even the good one he promised I could have.

I just want to live through Phil and his snack addiction and pretend it's me!

[mitsleo]

They framed Steve's polaroid! Why are they so hell bent on making me this emotional?! I love these soppy guys so much!

[glitterintheair]

They framed Steve's polaroid! Why are they so hell bent on making me this emotional?! I love these soppy guys so much!

Yeah, you could see it in the Moving out keep it or yet it video. There are 3 Polaroids on the fridge: one of Steve, next to that there’s one of Phil with Norman and the third one is assumed to be Colin.

Anyway, Dan posting it now is random but.. okay?? I guess?? (Don’t wanna be suspicious about this ongoing activity but I am. Just a bit.)

[hello9217]

It sort of looks like they are magnets that they got made

[inanerat]

It sort of looks like they are magnets that they got made

tbh looks something like this https://www.amazon.com/Freez-Frame-Magn ... B074ZVQ51J Just a little clear plastic magnet sleeve to put existing photos in.

[oriharakaoru]

Sidenote, I think I remember them saying (maybe in one of Phil's Draw My Life videos?) that they put all the money from the book advance into bankrolling the tour . . . gusty move, boys!

*incredibly* gusty move, but i think it paid off! that's another thing i'm super-curious about. like, we know musicians make most of their money from touring (potentially millions depending on the size of the tour and size of the venues)...

i have a friend more on the book-selling side of things, but she knows a lot about the publishing industry, and she thinks it's possible that dan's advance for ywgttn might have earned him six-figures. :0 i mean, maybe, eh? with the ~clout of being a NYT best-selling author, sales numbers, and all the other career stuff under his belt...

p.s. i think you're totally right about the motivation behind tabinof. it wasn't a "we're gonna get rich from this book" thing at all. it was the permanency of the medium and the challenge of creating something so different from their usual stuff.

[lefthandedism]

The lads have been busy, and we have been busy discussing them! There will be a new main thread soon, so get your thread name suggestions in here.

[alittledizzy]

Is there a way to know how Dan's book is doing with pre-sales? Or do those figures only come in once the books ship?

I do think he probably gets a bigger advance than most people writing books on mental health/self help type of deals. Like it was previously said, having that NYT best seller label to slap on there plus his general name recognition and built in audience is probably a win/win for any publishing company so they know they aren't taking a risk on not making their investment back on him.

Plus we know from what Dan said - I think in the first stereo? Maybe? - the publishing company came to him, not the other way around.

[soveinco]

Is there a way to know how Dan's book is doing with pre-sales? Or do those figures only come in once the books ship?

My understanding is that presales numbers don't usually get announced publicly, but I could be wrong. If we have fandom people who work at HarperCollins, they might be able to look it up? (At my company, we get sent weekly grids with presales numbers, but alas, I'm not at HarperCollins.) Publishers Marketplace lists its highest best-seller position right now as #37 on Amazon from the week it was announced, so that would be some indication of pretty good presales on Amazon anyway, I suppose? Doesn't indicate anything re: bookstore orders, etc., of course.

Semi-related, I do see a little stub/preview of a Publishers Weekly article that I think says it has an announced first print run of 100,000, but those announced first print runs are sometimes beefed up for PR purposes (whereas the print runs I was able to look up for their other books were the actual ones from the inventory info).



Not really related at all, but kind of fun: I found out while looking around online that the "HQ" imprint that it's being published with in the UK is a rebranding of Harlequin UK. (They publish their romance novels under a different imprint in the UK, anyway. But it does explain why it's a different HarperCollins imprint, Dey Street, in the US.)

Dan romance!writer AU when???