“Oh What a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.”

~ This is a melon skin overcolorized. ~

 

Scott Pratt in his blog roll The Writer’s Predicament, explains in exquisite, but simple and heart-felt detail the financial side of working as a published author, a writer who has garnered a contract from a large and well-respected publisher, his having been Putnam Penguin Publishers.

The most striking feature of his post, besides his heartfelt honesty, includes his willingness, not unlike Mara Wilson (see my previous blog post: Of Mara Wilson, Secret Service Agents in Cartagena, and The Truth About Acting … ) too, he, in very simple words, explains how the vast majority of authors, once the publisher brings the author’s works to print, must then spend of the author’s own money to promote and market her or his own work.

Now this may not sound so terrible when you consider that some authors, more in past years than in recent, have received advances of 25-50 or even 100 thousand dollars.

Yet what Scott so brilliantly reveals is the timing of when an author actually receives in hand the check of delivering her or his advance, and check, that he points out, comes only after the agent has taken her or his 15% cut.

Receiving that check may take some time.

A long time ago I learned that literary agents do not necessarily mail out advancement checks to authors as soon as the agents receives it.

You know, the holds banks put on funds/checks, their way of manipulating our money to work for them, i.e. make money from our monies?

Collect enough checks from authors you represent, 15% from each of the advances you got publishers to pay those authors, and leave the money your, the said agent’s bank account, and a pretty sizable amount of interest can and does accrue, all of which goes to the agent.

Each time money passes through an individual’s hands, the intended payee loses.

Many people in years prior to the financial crash of 2008 collected–I refuse to say earned–a lot of money by simply handling money earned by someone else, money the handler was to deliver to the person who actually earned it, but the handler took her or his own sweet time in delivering.

I seems that the economics of making money in the United States has rested on this operating model, a model I term a ponzi scheme, for a long time, at least since the turn of the last century, i.e. 1900.

Bernie Madoff has not worked alone.

In fact one could assert he took what has been in operation for quite some time and perfected to the point of scheming a vast number of people out of money.

Only problem is his set up encountered a point where the money he was siphoning off took a nosedive that yielded a great loss of money, often times wiping out the entire earnings due individual investors along with all they had invested.

Nothing grips people’s attention like coming up empty.

Which demonstrates the wisdom of both the movie industry and publishers.

I suspect the actors and actresses who work for the movie industry, as well as the writers who have garnered contracts, through the actions of their agents–actresses and actors also have agents–also run on empty much of the time.

When I say empty I mean, low bank accounts as well as low emotional fortitude.
Why the rampant use of drugs?

Could it stem from standing all those hours on the various movie sets stifling your creativity and trying to ‘get it’ like the movie director wants?

Something tells me that as with authors working under contract with publishers, actresses and actors too do not receive the checks they are due for having starred in movies as soon as they complete the shoot.