You don't write a book to make money from the book. You write a book to make money from the aftermath. My best friend has written a couple of NYT best sellers

You don't write a book to make money from the book. You write a book to make money from the aftermath. My best friend has written a couple of NYT best sellers and a number of others that weren't best sellers. Even after his first best seller, his next advance was only around $100K. For about 6 months work (over a 1 year time period), that's not a great wage for many of the engineers here. But, he makes over $1 million/year on the aftermath (mostly speaking).