>> Remembering that the average novelist makes less per year than the average
>> grade school teacher, if 2000 copies of a book are read or downloaded
>online
>> instead of purchased, that loss of $2-3,000 can make a huge impact on the
>> writer's financial life.
>>
>
>I agree that you should not be posting or copying peoples works without
>permission. However, I am curious how you made the above statistic.

This is hardly news; this has been covered in any number of magazine articles
and books about writing, from Publisher's Weekly on up and down the line. And
it's not limited to prose writers; the Writers Guild of America noted recently
in a report that only about 2% of its members earn $100,000 or more per year;
most earn maybe $15-30,000 a year, meaning only about one or two sales at tops,
and sometimes not that.

Prose advances on fiction (and nonfiction) have not even kept up with
inflation. Where they were about $3,000 for a first novel about 10 years ago,
they're still at or near that number.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
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