Nickel and dimed to death

One of the reasons that fiction writers are so miserly about every penny they earn or could potentially earn is the cost of doing business as a professional writer. Writers must have a computer and high speed internet access (you may have seen some of those poor starving writers who don't own a computer who come to libraries to use the public access comuters and internet) in order to prepare their manuscripts. They must keep in touch with editors and the market requirements of various publishers by regularly reading Publishers Weekly (PW), Literary Market Place (LMP), Writers Market, Writers Digest, The Writer, and other trade publications (do you know how much a subscription to PW costs these days?). They must also pay their own rent for an office, office insurance, health insurance premiums, etc. Their agent normally takes 15% of the gross and forwards the rest to the writer. The writer then pays quarterly self-employed social security and medicare (both his own and the employer's portions).

The real problem is the way commercial publishers pay royalties on fiction.

Normally, the book publsiher will offer an advance against royalties which is paid within 90 days of signing the contract. Then the publsiher sends royalty statements and checks every six months (semiannually) after the sales exceed the advance. With corporate accounting delays and waiting for returns of unsold copies from booksellers, semiannual payments often are delyed for a year or more.

Likewise, when a publsiher sells subsidiary rights (paperback rights, foreign translation rights, movie or tv rights) the publisher collects the money and waits to make sure the advance has been recovered and any credits for returns have been accounted for. The publsiher earns interest on that money while the writer has to wait and wonder when the check will be in the mail. When the check finally does come, it goes first to the agent who cashes the check and takes out the agency commission. Then, finally, the agent sends a check for the balance to the writer.