Interestingly, Samuel Clemens wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer expecting to make money from it. "By the time the prospectus and agents were in the field [TAT

Interestingly, Samuel Clemens wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer expecting to make money from it. "By the time the prospectus and agents were in the field [TATS was published in the US by the American Publishing Co., on a subscription (!) basis], a pirated edition of the novel had been on the market for four months. [I]t is [...] likely that [a Canadian publisher, the Belford Brothers] set [the pirated edition] from a hastily imported copy of the British one [published in Britain to secure a copyright there]. Their version of the novel was available in three prices: $.75, $1.00 or $2.25 -- considerably less than the authorized one would cost. And there was no way to keep pirated copies of the book from coming into America along steamboat and train lines. ... The copy in the Barrett Collection graphically indicates what [Clemens] was up against on its titlepage, where someone (the name has been effaced) recorded where and when the book was bought: on the steamer St. Lawrence, perhaps on its way into America, and in September, 1876 -- fully three months before [the American Publishing Co.] was ready to sell any copies on which [Clemens] could make money. "The delay cost [Clemens] over $10,000, according to his own reckoning, and contributed to the book's weak first-year sales. ... [T]he fate of Tom Sawyer not only soured him on the American Publishing Co; it also seems to have discouraged him as a writer. During the next five years he published only one book." (https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/tomsawye/tomcomp.html https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/tomsawye/tomcomp.html)