It took me a while to realize that my book had failed. No one ever told me point-blank that it had.
The Economics Of Poverty (Or How Writing My Book Made Me Poor)
In 2008 I sold a book-in-progress for $200,000 ($170,000 after commission, to be paid in four installments), which still seems to me like a lot of money. At the time, though, it seemed infinite. The resulting book—a “paperback original,” as they’re called—has sold around 8,000 copies, which is about a fifth of what it needed