If somebody told you that the fruit of your labours, the prize for your hours of endeavour and inner torment would be a miserly 7% of the jacket price – would you bother? If you are looking at a nice £4.99 jacket price, keeping it price savvy, is the £0.35 really ample reward? Makes you think doesn’t it!? So, if not for the money, why are you doing it? Is it just vanity? You must be heavily egotistical when you think about it – can’t be for the money, the riches, the trappings of fame, not for 7% it can’t…

So, if I’m only going to get 35p, I’m going to dig my heals in, and keep everything as mine, I’m not going to change tack, alter or remove anything in a vain attempt to shift a few more copies – and that’s kinda rewarding. If you are not chasing the money, if it is all about you and your creation, then dam it, you can wrap yourself nice and snug in the art-for-arts sake blanket.

Although, for a 25% return, I would consider making Amy a mid-western American, traveling the world bringing truth justice and the American way – the ‘baddie’ wont’ need to change, he’s a Brit, but for some extra gold coins…

Yeah, as if!

7% though, what a tiny return for your labour! I’d have to sell over 350,000 copies just to make a reasonable attempt to pay of the average mortgage – and that would be a very lot of paper to shift! So, I’d have to shift as many copies as say American Sniper (which had a massive movie tie-in to boost sales) in order to make a living – daunting isn’t it!

And then when you think of true ‘mega-sales’, someone like J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that has sales around 4.5m, or Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code c5m, you can see sheer size of the task you face if all this typing is an attempt to make a living…

So, if you see a writer who “made it”, be nice to them, they worked very hard for that 7%!