I have to weigh in with Betsy and Lyra Jane here. When I was buying romance, I was paying first-time authors sometimes as little as $3,000 advances for 100,000-word manuscripts they'd slaved over. And they were holding down full-time jobs, raising kids, trying to have lives, too. Eight years ago, that initial $150,000 advance would have been even more impressive than it would be today, and she got -- what? $80,000? -- for that last book. Yet I know plenty of genre authors (the same ones who were getting those crappy advances) who love what they write and, if not ecstatically happy with their advances, are more than willing to keep writing, and work their way up the ladder.

Mid-list authors do suffer -- I get that. There were dozens of novels I wanted to buy when I was acquiring (literary fiction, not romance) that I wasn't given the go-ahead for because they wouldn't earn out (and, to be completely truthful, because we were a very commerical house without the reputation for thoughtful or "important" fiction). And yeah, it sucks that books like that aren't what everyone's reading instead of the latest thriller. So I empathize with her on one level.

But the last paragraph, as Betsy pointed out, was what really got me. Everyone hopes for that call about the NYT list, but not everyone seems to think it's the only reason to write. Especially not those who "need" to write, who do it as naturally as breathing, no matter what the publishing prospects.

I'm not a huge fan of that level of starry-eyed naivete, and I don't think anyone ought to go into this business with their eyes scrunched up.

I'm not, either, which is why I think it's a good thing this article exists.

(To clarify, I think it's good to have out there a Cautionary Tale of the Next Big Thing, or Why Not to Believe Your Own Hype, because there are plenty of people who want to be writers that will never see the reality pill. I just have to look at the LJ friends list to see that this has opened a number of eyes. So it served its purpose.)

I figure it's stories or ransom notes...ooh, on topic and an Elmore Leonard reference. Score! Actually, I think that line is "What kind of writing pays the best?" "Ransom notes."

I got less for all three of the new series books combined than I got for the one little Celtic fantasy I wrote. And the Ringan-Penny books together earned me the same in advances as Plainsong did on its own - and we're talking about the same publisher and the same editor.

I write because that's what I do. I'm a storyteller; I tell stories. I'm hoping like hell to be able to live off it, because I have a disease that makes a lot of other options non-starters.

And midlist sucks. It really does. You have to work ten times as hard to get it looked at, your "backup" consists of them sending a copy out if you ask them to and maybe a single one-page press release. I can say, though, that I find it much easier in the Time of Internet than I did before.

But Betsy's right about that sense of entitlement. If being a writer is ruining her pleasure in reading - and like Plei, I find that writing has really taken away a lot of my pleasure in reading new stuff - then she needs to decide which matters more to her. If it's one or the other, she needs to decide which, and go there.

I'm not, either, which is why I think it's a good thing this article exists.

Yes, exactly. I'm with you - I'm glad she wrote it. Not in love with the lady herself, mind you, not based on this article, but it's valuable stuff there.

I think the way she said it got on my nerves. Which, not really helping her case...although I'm not disputing her facts or anything.

I find that writing has really taken away a lot of my pleasure in reading new stuff - then she needs to decide which matters more to her. If it's one or the other, she needs to decide which, and go there.

I wonder if, reading between the lines, the author in question hasn't also lost her pleasure in writing, as well. It certainly seems to be the case, and would explain the emphaisis on things selling, or succeeding, or what have you.

I mean, tempermentally, I'm always in the midst of an existential crisis. I could be Steven King, and I'd be in the midst of one, wondering if any of it mattered or was worth doing. I'm Eeyore after he dipped into the Sartre one too many times. So I'm used to it. Seems to me, though, that this author isn't used to such things, and is thus questioning her worth based on artificial standards and her own failure to live up to them.

I say, stating the obvious.

Deb and Lyra Jane, meant to say I got both your emails. Thanks so much. And will respond, maybe later. Right now I've taken on a lot of extra freelance work since the book thing went 'splodey and it's not easy to work with the baby. She really only takes one long afternoon nap, and the husband is working till nine every night but Friday, so I'm having trouble keeping up with everything.

I think the way she said it got on my nerves.

I'm with Erika. I just realized that I'm much more comfortable with sorrow than with rage. "Damn, I really wanted things to turn out differently" is much more palatable to me than "Damn, I was SCREWED!". As writers, we're all screwed. Better to light some candles than to scream about it.

I've spent at least ten years talking to writers and reading about writing. (Possibly instead of writing, I admit.) EVERY serious book about writing I've read, and every writer I've known, has said "Don't expect to get rich. Don't even expect to make a living. If you do make a living, it's a happy accident." The idea that great writing ought to make you comfortably middle-class is alien to me.

Seems to me, though, that this author isn't used to such things, and is thus questioning her worth based on artificial standards and her own failure to live up to them.

Plei, you're a wise woman. It's a pity she managed to be so damned irritating about it, because I felt the same sort of irritated sympathy toward her that I would to a spoiled kid who, good at heart, was suddenly confronted with something he/she couldn't get just by wanting. That's where I was totally with Betsy in the irritation stakes on this woman's lament: I wanted to shake the girl, and say look, dear, you need to suss this out, and do it quickly. Yes, you liked the smell of the pretty shiny money and the idea that this would now and forever keep you from being a secretary, or whatever. I totally understand that.

But your agent has a point: suck it up and do one of two things. Either write because you're a writer, and stop hanging your writing on the dollar attached, or else stop writing because the industry is out to pay 22-year-old chick lit writers from Ireland, who write books savaged by nearly reviewer on earth, $1m contracts for US rights to a first novel.

Hell, I've done both.