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This is a useful thread, but advances aren't a wage and shouldn't be thought of as such. Functionally we often have to treat them that way, and responsible GN imprints try and give artists advances that reflect this reality. But ultimately, an advance is tied to predicted sales. https://twitter.com/litebox_info/status/1283200341849387012
It's an advance on your royalties. When you "earn out" that means you've sold enough books that your royalties equal your original advance. That's when you start getting paid again.
Advances reflect a complicated alchemy of practicalities -- how well the publisher thinks your book will sell, whether they had to compete for your book with other pubs, how aggressive your agent is, the norms of your particular imprint. But they are absolutely not a wage.
Whether you can afford to work on a book given the advance being offered means that you probably have to do some math in which you treat it like a wage, especially if you're an artist. But ultimately, some types of books are never going to offer an advance you can live off of.
As is so often the case with this stuff, the best way to make sure you aren't being taken advantage of is to find an agent to represent you in your negotiations, BEFORE you accept an offer from a publisher.
If what you want is to make a decent living drawing creator-owned comics, I'd recommend reading up on what kinds of comics sell a large number of copies via major publishers (spoiler: it's comics for kids) and focus your pitching energies accordingly.
Tweeting this thread at 1am sure is a Summer 2020 mood.
