# How To Lose a Third of a Million Dollars Without Really Trying



## A. E. Lowan (Sep 17, 2019)

A useful cautionary tale.

How To Lose A Third Of A Million Dollars Without Really Trying


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## Ban (Sep 17, 2019)

They were given 6 figures twice and managed to squander it? Got to be honest, that's on them, and I'd be real happy if I had the opportunity to risk becoming a cautionary tale like this!


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## A. E. Lowan (Sep 17, 2019)

Ban said:


> They were given 6 figures twice and managed to squander it? Got to be honest, that's on them, and I'd be real happy if I had the opportunity to risk becoming a cautionary tale like this!


Agreed. I think it proves that artists are pretty silly people. But it also proves that we MUST be our own best advocates for our professional lives.

And speaking of silly, ignore that I misspelled "Really." I was yelling at the cat. >.<


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## A. E. Lowan (Sep 17, 2019)

Chuck Wendig wrote a good response. Not necessarily safe for work. It's Wendig.

How To Be A Professional Author And Not Die Screaming And Starving In A Lightless Abyss


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## Devor (Sep 17, 2019)

She keeps calling it a pay cut - which I think shows that she's thinking about it all wrong.  It's not a job.  She wrote the book, and she sold the book.  That's not the same thing at all.


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## Ban (Sep 17, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> Chuck Wendig wrote a good response. Not necessarily safe for work. It's Wendig.
> 
> How To Be A Professional Author And Not Die Screaming And Starving In A Lightless Abyss



I much prefer this article. 

So uh... you wouldn't happen to have the summoning ritual to invoke those Bibliodeities of Mannahattan?


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## A. E. Lowan (Sep 17, 2019)

Devor said:


> She keeps calling it a pay cut - which I think shows that she's thinking about it all wrong.  It's not a job.  She wrote the book, and she sold the book.  That's not the same thing at all.


Thing is, it is a job. Just one paid by a lunatic with little rhyme or reason - or so it seems most days. You have to think of writing as a job to be able to churn out one or two or three books a year, to show up everyday at your desk (or wherever) and make pages. It just doesn't pay like a normal job.


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## Devor (Sep 17, 2019)

Publishing a book is much closer to running your own business than it is to a job or to freelancing work.  You've got a product and you're selling it through distributors.  Seems pretty straightforward.


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## ThinkerX (Sep 17, 2019)

I have known several people with radically different jobs who ended up in similar straights.

My older brother died back in the 90's.  He'd checked all the right boxes on the various insurance and benefit forms.  His wife (cashier/custodian with the school district) got the house free and clear, plus six digits in cash (be substantially more today), plus a check for her preteen daughter.  She blew through the entire heap and then some in just three years.  Trips. Golf clubs (gold plated perhaps?) Other stuff.  At the end of that time all she had to show for it was a new husband and a half built garage on a house with a second mortgage.  

About fifteen years ago, tail end of my pizza delivery days, I worked with a guy who came into a barely six digit judgment as a result of a medical malpractice suit (close relative died on the operating table, basically).  Now, he wasn't rich, had kids - and debts.  Bill collectors came swarming out of the woodwork, and latched onto a big slice of that pile. The rest, he and the wife just sort of blew through.  Clothes. Vacation.  That sort of stuff.  Then one day he woke up and realized that six digit stack now stood at less than fifteen grand.  He put his foot down *hard.*  Stopped all the BS spending.  Bought a decent used car, used the remainder as a down payment on a modest house.  The wife was so severely ticked off she dang near divorced him.  

Then there is the other extreme.  Can't say I knew the guy - nobody did, the last ten-fifteen years of his life - but there was an old homesteader hereabouts who struck it rich in real estate - his 160 acre homestead became a pricey subdivision.  He became richer yet when his relatives died.  Then things took a ugly turn.  My involvement came about as a quest for a dependable used vehicle - a 'running around' rig.  Dad said he knew of one I could latch onto at an estate sale he was headed to; he'd already bought a generator and needed some help getting it moved.  When I mentioned it to my aged boss at the time, he became highly interested.  We followed narrow back roads way out in the woods, past the utility lines  I expected the usual cabin and shop type deal found on the older homesteads,  Instead, there was a clearing in the woods dotted with CONEX units (metal transport containers normally toted by semi's. Surrounding these units was literally pile after pile of trash, along with crates and canisters, giving a sort of 'meth-lab in a landfill' vibe.  Giant dumpster in back - not the wimpy compact car sized ones, but one big enough to park a pickup in.  Poked around a bit.  Started noticing things - like high end, top quality power and shop tools in the one CONEX unit.  About thirty fishing poles, each with an easy three digit price tag.  Good quality solar panels and inverter's.  And the generator, a mechanical beauty in its own right.  But living quarters?  Well, that was just a single room in the end of the one CONEX unit.  Anyhow, we loaded up the generator and waited for the estate executor to show up with the vehicle (a van).  Talked some more. Learned this was the third time they'd had that size of dumpster out at this place.  She spoke of mailing thirty some boxes, each 50+ pounds, packed with silver.  Finally gave some money for the van and left.  More talking on the way home.  Seems that homesteader went a bit wacko - actually a lot wacko - during his last couple of decades.  Feuds with surviving relatives.  Feuds with the IRS - story goes he was supposed to have buried a CONEX unit filled with treasure at one point.  Refused to pay taxes.  In the end he retreated to this...dump site...and faded from view.  In his will, he attempted (and failed) to leave the estate to a two year old.  Yes, he was loaded.  But was it worth decades of paranoia and isolation?


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## Yora (Sep 18, 2019)

I've always been of the opinion that trying to make a living as an artist is insane. First you have to become a succesful artist, then you can start thinking whether your art makes enough money to live off.


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## FifthView (Sep 18, 2019)

Following along with ThinkerX's stories, I was also reminded of a few I've read over the years, where some low-paid employee—a janitor here, a school teacher there—had built up a fortune over decades simply by living moderately and saving cash.



Devor said:


> Publishing a book is much closer to running your own business than it is to a job or to freelancing work. You've got a product and you're selling it through distributors. Seems pretty straightforward.



Yeah, it's like many corporations. You have a great product that practically flies off the shelves, but you either have to keep developing new products, innovating, or over time you'll end up without a business. Which has happened many times in our economy. One-hit wonders in music, or actors who leapt into the public consciousness via a single role who subsequently disappeared: examples in art. Not everyone produces a Minecraft that can keep going and going and going forever bringing in the big bucks.


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## A. E. Lowan (Sep 18, 2019)

FifthView said:


> Yeah, it's like many corporations. You have a great product that practically flies off the shelves, but you either have to keep developing new products, innovating, or over time you'll end up without a business. Which has happened many times in our economy. One-hit wonders in music, or actors who leapt into the public consciousness via a single role who subsequently disappeared: examples in art. Not everyone produces a Minecraft that can keep going and going and going forever bringing in the big bucks.


That's exactly it. Writing is a volume business. Book series - especially in my genre, urban fantasy - traditionally don't pick up steam until Book 5 or 6. To merely survive you have to put out one or two or three, preferably two or three, books a year just to keep up with demand, so multiple series are recommended. A slower writer like me struggles with this pace, though we're working on ways to speed up my production.

Gaming is an excellent example. Games like Minecraft and Warcraft stay popular because they are always releasing new content, keeping players interested. In writing a series, we're basically doing the same: releasing new content. It's the reason for the flashes and shorts and standalones between the numbered books.


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## Ban (Sep 18, 2019)

And here I thought I was an artist and not a factory.

Sorry, carry on.


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## A. E. Lowan (Sep 18, 2019)

Ban said:


> And here I thought I was an artist and not a factory.
> 
> Sorry, carry on.


That's the state of the arts. It's not what we dreamed of but it's what we've got.


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## FifthView (Sep 18, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> That's the state of the arts. It's not what we dreamed of but it's what we've got.



Maybe we could seek patrons? Find an Elon Musk or Pope Francis or Donald Trump who will let us live in a little cottage on their estate while supporting our artistic endeavors? Are there any de Medici still alive and not already tapped out?


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## CupofJoe (Sep 18, 2019)

FifthView said:


> Maybe we could seek patrons? Find an Elon Musk or Pope Francis or Donald Trump who will let us live in a little cottage on their estate while supporting our artistic endeavors? Are there any de Medici still alive and not already tapped out?


Well... You can alway try the Monk route and see PF thinks about the deal?
A few years back there was a local news story about a Potter that had moved in to a Widow's garden shed after the war and had spent 30-40 years making ceramics and living rent free. He had to move when she died and her relatives through him out. It was a very nice garden shed by the way...


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## Devor (Sep 18, 2019)

FifthView said:


> Maybe we could seek patrons? Find an Elon Musk or Pope Francis or Donald Trump who will let us live in a little cottage on their estate while supporting our artistic endeavors? Are there any de Medici still alive and not already tapped out?



There are .... not really any more of those.  There are plenty of patrons, but they shoot for breadth in the way they support the arts.  For instance there's tiny island resort that's been dedicated to letting writers live in peace and write, but they'll only take people for a few weeks.  I suppose the next best thing is to become a publishing house darling, and let them be your patron, but then again, that's what lead us to this conversation.  Anyways a benevolent patron of the arts could drop you as easily as a company, so it's not better.


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## FifthView (Sep 18, 2019)

Devor said:


> Anyways a benevolent patron of the arts could drop you as easily as a company, so it's not better.



Yeah, you'd probably have to dedicate every book to them, with effusive praise, or else write only on the themes and subject matter they wanted for your works, to even have a chance for long-lasting patronage.

Wait, am I talking about the publishing houses or the single wealthy eccentrics? I forget.


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## Slartibartfast (Sep 18, 2019)

The first article was a bit hard to swallow. After being paid mega-bucks for her first five loss-making books, instead of being cast out of the fold she was paid double the profits of her previous book to try again... and offered an extra contract which she turned down. Yet the tone indicates that she seems to think this (along with the paucity of spontaneously materialising mentors and consultants) is unfair. She's now 'merely' making double the average advance despite not exactly having a stellar record of making money for her publisher.

A part of me feels pretty bad that she was disappointed but we can all ignore our debts, have a millionaires weekend and be broke by the second of the month. She just got to do it with more money than most of us will ever see.


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## Ban (Sep 18, 2019)

FifthView said:


> Maybe we could seek patrons? Find an Elon Musk or Pope Francis or Donald Trump who will let us live in a little cottage on their estate while supporting our artistic endeavors? Are there any de Medici still alive and not already tapped out?



Something, something, Patreon. Why choose one patron if you can have many?

Making that work however...


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## A. E. Lowan (Sep 18, 2019)

Ban said:


> Something, something, Patreon. Why choose one patron if you can have many?
> 
> Making that work however...


This is a good point. I know a lot of artists who are turning to Patreon for supplemental income, but you need a pretty sizable fanbase and exclusive extras to offer to even make it work. That being said, when it works it works well.


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## Ban (Sep 18, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> This is a good point. I know a lot of artists who are turning to Patreon for supplemental income, but you need a pretty sizable fanbase and exclusive extras to offer to even make it work. That being said, when it works it works well.



I've seen people make it work by being honest to their patrons. If you have that fanbase, and say in advance that it is meant as a tipping jar and not for exclusive content, I think some people might be surprised at how generous readers can be.... or not. I feel that something like this has a bit of a bandwagon effect. If a Patreon page receives a good amount of money, others are more inclined to add to that pile because there is confirmation from others that it is worth tipping to.


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## A. E. Lowan (Sep 18, 2019)

Ban said:


> I've seen people make it work by being honest to their patrons. If you have that fanbase, and say in advance that it is meant as a tipping jar and not for exclusive content, I think some people might be surprised at how generous readers can be.... or not. I feel that something like this has a bit of a bandwagon effect. If a Patreon page receives a good amount of money, others are more inclined to add to that pile because there is confirmation from others that it is worth tipping to.


This is true. We don't do Patreon because we don't have the fanbase, yet, but we did once have a reader order a signed copy and paid us through PayPal, which is pretty standard for us. The pleasant surprise was the extra ten dollars they tossed in on top of the book's price and shipping costs. It was very considerate and unexpected.


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## Devor (Sep 18, 2019)

Slartibartfast said:


> A part of me feels pretty bad that she was disappointed but we can all ignore our debts, have a millionaires weekend and be broke by the second of the month. She just got to do it with more money than most of us will ever see.



Yeah, even trying very hard to be sympathetic, it's very much a facepalm story here. Sure, the publishing house could communicate better, I don't question that.  But everything still comes down to, she blew through the money and just kind of assumed it would keep coming - I mean, seriously, _at least_ pay off your debts, that's money management 101.


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## Slartibartfast (Sep 18, 2019)

Devor said:


> ...it's very much a facepalm story here...


After I posted I worked out what was irking me. It's the type of facepalm we all did (or maybe just me) when we got our first paycheck. I came out of it realising that I had been a prat who needed to proactively hunt down and find information and advice, budget like crazy and fight to get the best out of everything. She's setting herself up as a mentor and, despite having several stabs at doing it wrong, came out of her experiences still saying that competent financial advisors, coaches, and mentors should have just materialised in a puff of smoke and fixed her life for her.

[edit - clarified first sentence]


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## Steerpike (Sep 18, 2019)

Slartibartfast said:


> After I posted I worked out what was irking me. It's the type of facepalm we all did (or maybe just me) when we got our first paycheck. I came out of it realising that I had been a prat who needed to proactively hunt down and find information and advice, budget like crazy and fight to get the best out of everything. She's setting herself up as a mentor and, despite having several stabs at doing it wrong, came out of her experiences still saying that competent financial advisors, coaches, and mentors should have just materialised in a puff of smoke and fixed her life for her.
> 
> [edit - clarified first sentence]



She also said, in a series of Twitter posts relating to this article, that authors were employees of publishers, and that the publishers should engage with them better. This is not the case. Authors typically _are not_ employees of their publishers.


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## A. E. Lowan (Sep 18, 2019)

Steerpike said:


> She also said, in a series of Twitter posts relating to this article, that authors were employees of publishers, and that the publishers should engage with them better. This is not the case. Authors typically _are not_ employees of their publishers.


Agreed. I think that the crux of her issue is that she is very young, very inexperienced, and didn't have the first clue of where to turn for advice. Her first call should have been to her agent, and I think a ball was dropped, there. All the rest of the balls are hers.


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## Maker of Things Not Kings (Sep 19, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> Agreed. I think that the crux of her issue is that she is very young, very inexperienced, and didn't have the first clue of where to turn for advice. Her first call should have been to her agent, and I think a ball was dropped, there. All the rest of the balls are hers.



It seems to me that there's an inherent lack of money management skill in many young people. Lord knows I was guilty of it from the time I got my first job to maybe, say 25 or so. A large part of that seems to be the way the world tends towards inescapable debt being viewed as something perfectly normal and the ideas of saving money or simply living completely within one's means based on your current income level is a lost ideal. It sure as heck isn't social media sexy to do so.

My wife and I just celebrated our tenth year of making our living full time from our creative work. There are three things I can tell you:

One, we never could have done this successfully when we were 25. We weren't savvy enough, weren't focused enough or practical enough and weren't as aware of how rare it is to be in such a fortunate position.

Two, if we had not changed our entire lifestyle to fit that desire to work as full time artists, and to make that our number one priority above everything else, we never would have made it past year one.

Three, I am so glad I grew up with a spendthrift mother as a role model. 

When we are asked how we managed to get to this point, our answers seem to send people running for the hills, as if our so-called _sacrifices _have been so great they can't comprehend them. They don't seem all that much to us though.

We left a city to move to a small, rural, dairy county and cut our monthly expenses by nearly $500 in doing so.
We never go out to eat and cook every meal at home. (Helps here that I was a bistro chef for ten years prior)
We never spend money on full priced clothes, shoes, home products etc. Rarely buy anything that isn't necessary though we DO support other artists on Kickstarter and Patreon when we can.
We never bother with the newest phones or devices nor do we desire them.
We carry zero debt (which was not true for either of us when we met. But yes, no mortgage, no car payments, no credit debts, no school loans)
We have/use only one credit card, and it gets paid in full when used.

There's a lot that someone on the outside might label as us  "doing without" but we don't feel that way at all. We get to do what we love the most every single day. That entails working our behinds off seven days a week. It's the hardest, most demanding, most time consuming job I've ever had, but I wouldn't trade it for anything and I wouldn't change our lifestyle no matter the success level of any short period/given year. Month to month our income is never stable or guaranteed. Though over the years it actually has been far more consistent than we expected.

Creativity, I've come to think, should be a combination of full throttle passion AND good business sense. But I think that means following one (broad is ok) passion.  Instead of people walking through life thinking "Yes, I'll pursue this AND that AND that. . ." , and claiming they're all equally important, maybe they'd be better served to settle for, "I want this one thing. _Period_." and then do everything in their power to make that one thing a reality and only fill their lives with what supports that.

The idea of _having it all _seems an enduring farce. Not sure how it ever got started or why people fall for it time and again, but all I've seen it bring people is unhappiness and discontent, myself included until I stopped buying into it. 

All that is to say, I can't feel bad for the author at all. She's young. She obviously has some writing skill so the future may find her with another deal offered. If not, well, there is no one to blame but herself in my opinion. Learn the lessons and move forward.


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## pmmg (Sep 19, 2019)

I am willing to have a sugar-mama.

Meh, I have a good amount of money cause I have a day job and I've been at it a long time. Would be nice to make a bank with writing, but I don't really have it as a priority. Just want to tell stories, if I ever have the time. If I could have a wish, it would be for time, not money  Anyway, never surprised, fortunes are won and lost all the time. Its one thing to have a Ferrari, its another to drive it.


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## Danskin (Sep 23, 2019)

This was a very interesting response also: The Math

"the Math" by Dean Wesley Smith. Very much backing the indy publishing option.


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## gia (Oct 1, 2019)

Ban said:


> They were given 6 figures twice and managed to squander it? Got to be honest, that's on them, and I'd be real happy if I had the opportunity to risk becoming a cautionary tale like this!


Yeah kind of feeling the same way. It was like she was saying....I take responsibility but no one told me (in other words she didn't take responsibility)


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## Danskin (Oct 2, 2019)

As she says, it sounds a lot, but after tax and agents, it's about what a teacher would make in 4 years. 

You're not going to get big book deals often enough to live off that, and all of your royalties get removed until the advance is paid off, so you have no further income. It's not hard to see why that's hard to live off. And it's very rare for such big sums to keep coming.


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## Ban (Oct 2, 2019)

Danskin said:


> it's about what a teacher would make in 4 years.



Then I'd expect them to be able to live off it for 4 years as well.


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## FifthView (Oct 2, 2019)

From the article:

_But when I sold a trilogy to another publisher the following year for over $250,000 dollars (even now I cannot believe I wrote that sentence and, furthermore, that it’s true), I really thought I had made it — forever, not just for a moment. Not for this one book deal. Forever. Otherwise, I reasoned, they would never have paid me such enormous sums. These publishers must be investing in me for the long run. I was one of their own._​
"I was one of their own."

Leaving aside for the moment the issue of being a spendthrift vs being a penny-pincher, Heather Demetrios' mistake as a newly published author seems to have been two-fold.

First, a traditional view of workplaces led to the assumption that being accepted for a job—the books were the job—meant that continued work and payment for that work were guaranteed as long as she continued to...labor, heh. Whether as a teacher, a convenience store cashier, a factory employee, a used car salesperson...once you are hired, accepted for a role within a business or enterprise, you can depend on continued employment as long as you work and your work meets the criteria required by your employer. [Maybe not actually. Layoffs happen. Other things happen. But this is the general view, minus those possibilities.]

This view doesn't take into account the fact that the so-called "employer" in her case has millions of potential "employees" to choose from, month to month, to complete "tasks"—the production of new novels—that are limited in number. In other words, it's not exactly a zero sum game; having one's work accepted and receiving payment for it does not mean that a "position" has now been filled and competition for that position has been eliminated. A publisher can only publish so many new novels; so yes, those novels chosen by the publisher sort of win the zero sum lottery, heh. But their source, the authors, do not.

Second, Heather Demetrios fell into a common trap. An _identity trap_. I'm trying to remember the name of the European visitor to America who commented that an American's first question when meeting a stranger was, "What do you do?" whereas a European or perhaps a Brit would first ask, "Where are you from?" Circa sometime in the 19th C.; probably, this has changed. But in either case, there's an issue of identity, and more specifically, _unchanging_ identity. If I am this, then I am always this. I may change a job, so I no longer answer, "Salesman," heh; but whatever I become afterward is now my identification and will remain my identification for as long as I do it. As a newly published author, Heather Demetrios fell into the trap of "Published Author." Once that, forever that? And what attaches to that title, heh, to that identity? Perhaps the more apt title would be, "Once-published Author."

This second point intertwines with the first. A sustained role in an enterprise, as an employee of some sort, pairs well with the belief in the sustained identity. Except when the first never existed in the first place.

Incidentally, my knowledge of traditional publishing is rather limited. Are books really zero sum? One might think that a publishing house need not have an upper limit on the number of published books it produces per month, especially if we are including e-books and any novel could be published only as an e-book. Why not play the numbers and publish more and more and more that way? I would suggest two reasons. The traditional publishing house does, in fact, have "zero sum employees,"  i.e. a limited number of spots in its work force:  editors, marketing professionals, etc. Not only can each handle a limited workload, but a publishing house's expenses paying them and the other costs associated with their work must be limited. So, they are a bottleneck of sorts. For the second reason, I'd point at the potential for diminishing returns if a publishing house were to flood the market by releasing a bazillion e-novels every month:  Potential readers, also, are limited in number and they, too, represent a sort of bottleneck for the publishing house.

But what do I know of traditional publishing houses? Not a lot, really.

However, Danskin's link above suggests, to me, why independent publishing might prove much more profitable for the average individual author. The same bottlenecks exist for the independently publishing author, but at least the author can tailor the production and release of her own novels in such a way they'll make it through those bottlenecks, heh, especially long-term.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Oct 2, 2019)

This could have been avoided if she had done two things: read her contract(s) and spoke with her agent about the contracts. The terms of the contract, I imagine, were rather clear. This advance is for this book. I bet there were clauses that did not guarantee anything in the future and so forth.

And let this be general life advice, read your contracts.


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