Unless you're a star divulging all in a scandalous book or a politician writing your memoirs or someone decides you're the next Dan Brown/J.K. Rowling/Nora Roberts, etc., your advance isn't going to keep you in style for long. Just look at Brenda Hiatt's "Show Me the Money" each year. Yes, I know it's incomplete and not representative of all authors who write for a given publisher. But the figures in there for debut authors should be pretty good. I've seen advances for first timers as low as $1250 and as high as $25,000 (and higher). So much depends on the publisher, their level of enthusiasm for the book, their ability to put a "big" book out. But let's say you're writing a single-title. A more average advance might be between $3500-$7500, again, depending on who you write for and what your agent (if any) can get you. How long will that amount of money keep you, bearing in mind a few things?

 - If you're agented, 15% goes to them right off the top.

- There aren't any taxes taken out of that money, so it behooves you to keep some back to pay Uncle Sam.

- You should keep some of your money back to promote the book when it comes out. How much is up to you, but you should make a promotion budget and set that money aside.

 So, let's say that you had a $5000 advance on your book. After you pay your agent, that's $4250. Let's say you set aside another 30% for the IRS. That takes you to $2975. Now, you have to promote. Hmm. Hiring a publicist can be as much as $125 PER HOUR! That's just for their time. Bookmarks, mailings, RT ads, banner ads at reader sites. Not to mention how much time all that will cost you. You want to go to the RT conference to meet readers and booksellers? That will probably cost you $1200. Even the RWA conference is hard to get out of for less than $1000. But let's say you choose to do Romance Sells ($195), make 1000 bookmarks ($250, including file set up fee), hire someone to design your website ($750) and have it maintained by an active reader community ($75 per quarter/$300 annually). Now you're down to $1480. Not bad? Not so fast.

A publisher's publication schedule is long. I sold Bound and Determined on March 31, 2004. It came out January 3, 2006. I won't see a royalty statement for the book until this October. And I may earn money...but I may not. So, back to our example, let's say I received the balance of my advance in January 2005, after turning the book in. That still leaves me 21 months to live on $1480. Actually less since you've had to update your website and continue paying your host. And at the end of 21 months...there still may not be any gold at the end of the rainbow.

Another reality is that it takes a long time to pay royalties out. I won't go into depth about this but publishers frequently take 3 years or more to pay out on books. I'm still getting royalties on books published in 2001. And sometimes...you can't count on royalties. I know people who have sold books and never seen royalties. Ever. For a variety of reasons. Don't count on them, especially when you're a new author.

Another impediment to making money as an author: Reserves against returns. What does that mean? In a nutshell, bookstores can return books to publishers at any time. In theory, they could return a book purchased in 1985 if they still had it in stock by some miracle. So publishers "estimate" how many copies might be out there on some bookseller's strip list that they just haven't received back yet, and you guess it, they hold the royalties for those books back. Over years, they slowly release those amounts, slowly being the optimal word. How much to they hold? Most contracts just say "reasonable" and it's not a clause that's generally negotiable. So what's reasonable? Who knows? It's a bit different for each publisher, but rest assured they are not going to do anything risky. On the first few statements, they are probably holding half or more. Which means that it will take you years to get all the money due you on a book.

This is where I think epublishing has a leg up. No advance to pay back. No returns to mess with. No guessing how many units are out the door. No waiting for semi-annual checks. Monthly or quarterly payments. As a business model, it's a far more efficient one...