It's been the
feel-good story in the news during the past few days: 93-year-old Lorna Page was living in a
retirement home small apartment until she secured a large advance for her thriller,
A Dangerous Weakness. Amazingly, it was her first book! The money has allowed her to buy a five-bedroom house, and she's invited some of her friends
from the living in a retirement home to come live with her.
But Ray Girvan of
Apothecary's Drawer Weblog asks a good question. Where did this huge advance come from, given that
AuthorHouse is a self-publishing firm? They don't pay huge advances. Instead, authors pay
them to get published.
The
Making Light blog reaches this conclusion: Someone is fibbing.
Correction: Ray pointed out to me that "The newspapers didn't say she *herself* moved out of a care home. They said she moved from an apartment into a larger house, and plans to use it to move her friends out of care home." So I've corrected the above text.
Actually, reading the article more carefully (and reading between the lines a bit), I'm guessing that what happened was that Lorna Page moved into the larger home using money she already had, but she's hoping she'll strike it rich from the book and that she'll be able to use the proceeds to pay off the house. The poor woman obviously has no idea how little writers make.
Comments
"Even if the book was selling gangbusters, even if AuthorHouse paid royalties monthly, even if it sold a ton of copies, there
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2008/08/victoria-strauss-tales-of-big-advance.html
Um, we wouldn't have any personal experience in this area, would we, Alex?
*clings desperately to his wordprocessor*
It certainly sounds as though some wires got crossed in the researching and reporting of that article.
How midget writers make what?
Something got cut off.
:oP
It might be good publicity for her book, but it's going to lead more naive writers to AuthorHouse.