Ways Your Book Will Be Lucrative And Also Not

1. How royalties and advances and all that mess work (“How much money can authors expect from their first advance? This is the big question that never gets answered.”)

2. Hott insider secrets from a literary agent.

BUT REMEMBER THE ADVICE OF JAMI ATTENBERG, author of the super good and popular novel The Middlesteins: “This is not a stable career.”

From her blog: “…I do not have enough money right now to both buy an air conditioner for my house and fix the air conditioner in my car, because when you are writer and out on your own, out on a limb, you sometimes have to sit around and wait a really long time for checks to show up, and that is what I am doing at this moment in my life. (If I have said this once I have said this a million times, but it is worth repeating to you aspiring writers: This is not a stable career. This is not a stable career. This is not a stable career. Say that to yourself every morning when you wake up, and if you still want to be a writer after, oh, a few years of that, then have at it. But don’t say you weren’t warned.)”

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