Two questions

[guest]

Apologies if these have been discussed at length elsewhere:
1) How did Pat manage to swing a $100,000 advance?
2) How do they support themselves?

For #1 maybe it had something to do with Tor blindly looking at his Twitter follower count and thinking a lot of them would buy his books? Think that was theorized but a $100k advance for an unknown author is nuts, even for 3 books (~33k per book).

For #2, sounds like Pat probably has some money coming in through the insurance thing; I can't imagine Niki's making much off Posts by Ghosts.

Are they not saving for or thinking about retirement at all? How do they afford health insurance?

 

[Brooke Shields]

Retirement? How would that be any different to what they're currently doing?
Maybe they already are, like the impoverished buffoon Shane Noakes

 

[Salted Earth Truffle]

How did Pat manage to swing a $100,000 advance?

I’ve never seen anything validating this advance. Even if he did, it was for three books. Getting less than $35k (then subtract the agent’s cut) per book is nothing to brag about. None of his books earned out his advance, so he’s not seeing any royalties from them either.

 

[WifeStoreWill]

What makes you think he got a $100k advance? Because he said he did?

Even if that were true that means he made $100k over like 5-6 years.

 

[turdcutter]

1) he was riding high off of abandoning his daughter scot free and Tor dug his confidence.

2) PPP loans over $30k that's lasted them three years and counting

 

[Safka's Enticer]

A shitty refi that they blew through as disposable income instead of reinvesting

 

[cliveowen]

100k after taxes is like 70k? Minus agent fees and who knows what else. And for 3 books. So Pat clears about 20k per book. Not exactly primo bux for all that work.

From Tors point of view, it's the cost of doing business. 33k for a book isn't that much. Plus I'm sure he signed a shit 90s rapper tier contract that locked him in and gave all the rights to Tor in case the series was a hit and became a film.

 

[EraGodless]

I’ve never seen anything validating this advance. Even if he did, it was for three books. Getting less than $35k (then subtract the agent’s cut) per book is nothing to brag about. None of his books earned out his advance, so he’s not seeing any royalties from them either.

It's a lot from a boutique publisher and a completely unknown author- before the contract/book advance, Patrick's writing career consisted of a viral tweet of a dilemma that only a retard would think is clever, blog no one read, some opinion pieces in The Hill/New York Times, and maybe some other publications no one read. He had a paper thin resume and literally no education beyond high school. There are PhD's in literature and creative writing who cut off their balls to get a 100k advance and 3 book deal.

 

[porquedealer]

It's a lot from a boutique publisher and a completely unknown author- before the contract/book advance, Patrick's writing career consisted of a blog no one read, some opinion pieces in The Hill/New York Times, and maybe some other publications no read. He had a paper thin resume and literally no education beyond high school. There are PhD's in literature and creative writing who cut off their balls to get a 100k advance and 3 book deal.

This was for his 2nd Trilogy with TOR.
At this point he had a somewhat successful trilogy (trying to get bookscan numbers for that date) but the first book would have earned out the advance, second looked to be well on its way and the third wouldn't have been out very long.

Assuming he did get the $100k, that's over three years (he hasn't come close to earning out on the second trilogy).

AR new contract for new authors looks to be about $5k per book, with earning out number being 1000 copies.
Career earnings around $150k max over the last 8 years. that would include all audible, ebooks, etc.

That's all over now, seeing as in 2022 he sold less than 50 physical books total.
His 6th book has sold less than 300 copies since its release almost 3 years ago.
He'll be lucky to get 4 figures now.

Pat got a break, no doubt through contacts of Nikkis. He just squandered it because he is stupid and fat

 

[EraGodless]

This was for his 2nd Trilogy with TOR.
At this point he had a somewhat successful trilogy (trying to get bookscan numbers for that date) but the first book would have earned out the advance, second looked to be well on its way and the third wouldn't have been out very long.

Assuming he did get the $100k, that's over three years (he hasn't come close to earning out on the second trilogy).

AR new contract for new authors looks to be about $5k per book, with earning out number being 1000 copies.
Career earnings around $150k max over the last 8 years. that would include all audible, ebooks, etc.

That's all over now, seeing as in 2022 he sold less than 50 physical books total.
His 6th book has sold less than 300 copies since its release almost 3 years ago.
He'll be lucky to get 4 figures now.

Pat got a break, no doubt through contacts of Nikkis. He just squandered it because he is stupid and fat

Whomever greenlit the first advance, should never work in publishing again. His writing is really bad. I cannot believe he submitted a sample/a pitch, and someone thought it was a great idea. His writing isn't even hack. It's clumsy and devoid of humor and there's nothing really sci-fi about it except they take place in space.

I guess I'm just amazed that some fat jackass with zero education and piss poor writing skills/talent, was gifted a writing career. I'd love to know who told Patrick he was good writer. Maybe it was the same person that told him he was funny and he should try standup comedy.

 

[guest]

This was for his 2nd Trilogy with TOR.
At this point he had a somewhat successful trilogy (trying to get bookscan numbers for that date) but the first book would have earned out the advance, second looked to be well on its way and the third wouldn't have been out very long.

Assuming he did get the $100k, that's over three years (he hasn't come close to earning out on the second trilogy).

AR new contract for new authors looks to be about $5k per book, with earning out number being 1000 copies.
Career earnings around $150k max over the last 8 years. that would include all audible, ebooks, etc.

That's all over now, seeing as in 2022 he sold less than 50 physical books total.
His 6th book has sold less than 300 copies since its release almost 3 years ago.
He'll be lucky to get 4 figures now.

Pat got a break, no doubt through contacts of Nikkis. He just squandered it because he is stupid and fat

Thanks for this, I didn't realize he had previously written another trilogy with Tor that sold decently well. The simple fact I'm commenting on this forum will make me seem biased but in all seriousness, I gave a good-faith effort to read Starship Repo and I didn't enjoy it, ended up dropping it about 1/3 of the way through.

 

[BakersfieldChimp]

Thanks for this, I didn't realize he had previously written another trilogy with Tor that sold decently well. The simple fact I'm commenting on this forum will make me seem biased but in all seriousness, I gave a good-faith effort to read Starship Repo and I didn't enjoy it, ended up dropping it about 1/3 of the way through.

His previous publisher was Angry Robot.

 

[cliveowen]

Tor isn't really a boutique publisher. It's the premier scifi publisher. A few years back they signed a long term deal with Scalzi that pays a 260k advance per book, for 13 books.

 

[Kurt_Love]

He just said it was six figures, child. It was probably 875k or so.

 

[EraGodless]

Tor isn't really a boutique publisher. It's the premier scifi publisher. A few years back they signed a long term deal with Scalzi that pays a 260k advance per book, for 13 books.

That makes it even worse- his writing is really, really bad. It's on the same level as his standup- maybe even worse if that's possible.

 

[BudDickman]

His book advances were chump change. The biggest one he got was for a multi-book deal which totaled like $25k. I think he's grossed $40k total on book advances for his entire career.

 

[FurBurger]

Apologies if these have been discussed at length elsewhere:
1) How did Pat manage to swing a $100,000 advance?

He didn't. He tweeted about getting a $30k advance from Tor (for three books) and then they immediately made him take it down, suggesting that it was true. $10k per book is roughly industry standard, although obviously high for a man of Pat's talents; and for that they'd be expecting a book a year. He wrote two books of a trilogy, and then Tor told him to get fucking serious as neither of them sold, so he started a new trilogy, and that didn't sell either. I don't think any of his Tor books sold out their advances, so he gets no money from any sales until they do. His earlier (Angry Robot?) books might have sold out, but only because he successfully negotiated lower than average advance, and I don't think they're selling in numbers worth writing a royalty check for.

2) How do they support themselves?

Pat's an insurance salesman. Here's his Wisconsin licence, which he claims he only keeps going for residuals for policies he sold years ago. That doesn't explain why he applied for a brand-new Montana licence during the pandemic. He's got others, too.

I've no idea what Nikki does for a living. She's got Posts By Ghosts, as well as a part-time gig for a podcast called "The Moth"; but I would be stunned if that paid more than $100 a month. I'm pretty sure The Moth is a New York thing, so at best she'd only be paid for the shows it does in Milwaukee. In fact, she's not on their staff page, so I'm guessing she just helped organise one show but wrote it up like a recurring gig in her bio.

She's also (apparently) got a wealthy mother who may be sending her money. There's also a theory that the state pays her money as a full-time caretaker to her retarded husband.

And then there's the PPP loans, including one for Posts by Ghost's mortgage... which is weird because it doesn't own a house, and yet the loan was to the company, and she can't just spend the company's money on her own shit like her mortgage.

Hopefully the IRS will get around to that one shortly.

How do they afford health insurance?

Staff discount, I guess.