The funny/sad thing about this is that the scam relies on people not understanding how publishing contracts work. You get paid an advance against royalties. Then you earn out that advance via sales. Once your sales tip past the amount of your advance? You make more money. https://twitter.com/theGrio/status/1300301045889982464
Now, his deal announcement says "sold at auction" which usually means he did just fine in terms of an advance. There's no mention of the range, but let's assume since he's stocked on Target shelves that it was significant or maybe even major. What does that mean?
Well here is a handy dandy blog post that breaks down the key. Generally an "at auction" tends to be in the categories of significant or major. Sometimes they come in at Good. All of these carry 6 figure paychecks. Some are split into thirds or quarters http://laurenmorrill.blogspot.com/2011/06/publishers-weekly-deal-jargon-key.html
To give you a framework Hood Feminism sold at auction. I had a significant deal. It was split into payments based on things like contract signing, draft accepted, publication and post pub. My case is a little weird because I earned out before my last payment.
My numbers are likely lower than his, and while I'm also still doing other work (including public speaking and so on) functionally we're doing fine. It's possible his money is funny, but it isn't because his publisher didn't pay him enough. Houghton Mifflin pays just fine.
Now, I am doing a lot of promo stuff for Hood Feminism. And by a lot I mean book clubs, library events, festivals etc. You know what I'm not doing? Using someone's death to shill for sales. First of all that's horrendous, second of all it's utterly unnecessary.
There's no justification for what happened in that email. I can't remember if he made the NYT list, but even if he didn't, I promise you that book isn't losing him any money. At worst he just hasn't earned out his advance yet. But he'll be making royalties for as long as it sells
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