The Family Business

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

No Love Is Wasted

Odysseus: Regret it why?

Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.

Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in. 

*A couple of months later* 

Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit. 

Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure. 

This August, join me for the 30 Days Writing Challenge, #Augustrope✨

In which we have a list of various tropes as the writing prompts. While these tropes are commonly used as recurring plot devices in fanfiction, you can also write your original story with them.

For 30 days (August 1st—August 30th, the 31st is the rest day), you can write anything with a different prompt for each day.

Any ship, fandom, characters, genres are welcome. Be it fanfiction or original fiction, just write it!

★★ 2026 Augustrope's Prompt List ★★

Day 1 — First Meeting

Day 2 — They Were Roommates

Day 3 — Beach Episode

Day 4 — ‌Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics

Day 5 — ‌Domestic Fluff

Day 6 — Two People Love Triangle

Day 7 — ‌5 Times This + 1 Time That

Day 8 — Mistaken Identity

Day 9 — Coffeshop AU

Day 10 — Age Regression

Day 11 — ‌Near Death Experience

Day 12 — Enemies-to-Lovers

Day 13 — POV Outsider

Day 14 — There's Only One Bed

Day 15 — Coda/Episode Tag

Day 16 — Relationship Reveal

Day 17 — Hallmark AU

Day 18 — Amnesia

Day 19 — Body Swap

Day 20 — Potion/Spell Goes Wrong

Day 21 — Everyone Knows But Them

Day 22 — ‌Road Trips

Day 23 — Your-Fave-Movie AU

Day 24 — ‌In Vino Veritas

Day 25 — Elevator Fic

Day 26 — Fake/Pretend Relationship

Day 27 — Mutual Pining

Day 28 — ‌Meet The Family

Day 29 — Non-Human Character

Day 30 — Soulmate AU

🖇️ More info about Augustrope

Feel free to tag your work with #Augustrope (and/or #Augustrope2026) so that I can find them.

If you're on AO3, you can also add your work into the Augustrope Collection (Augustrope2026).

If you have any questions regarding the prompt, you can directly interact with this post 🫶🏻

Carved Porg.