murder.booklocker.com

I’ve noted elsewhere, that in the eyes of a lot of people, having your book listed on Amazon.com is the defining moment in which an ordinary person suddenly becomes AUTHOR.

I’d like to suggest an alternative transforming moment (not that I believe there really is one, other than the act of writing itself). I’d to offer the receipt of your first royalty check as a possibility. I just got mine in the mail — whooohooo!

I was sure that there were rules governing what to do with the first one so I went in search of them. I found one author whose initial response was similar to mine: “The day I got my first royalty check, I was tempted to frame it. But you can’t live on a framed check, so I copied it and took the real check to the bank.” However, one author wrote: “My first royalty check was for 66 cents, I framed it.” A third author is handling it a little differently: “We haven’t yet, but at some point, the next day or two, I’m going to ask Mary to do the corniest thing in the world. Take a photograph of me holding my first royalty check.”

Then there was this (I really cropped it for the effect): “it was nice to actually sell one or two books and get paid for it.” When the numbers go up, so does the enthusiasm: “And my first book … sold 57 copies it’s first month. But hey, you’ve got to start somewhere The royalty check was $110.43.”

But there’s always another way to look at it when the check seems to have taken forever to arrive: “This weekend I received my first ever income from my first ever book … . The royalty check came in the mail …, a whopping $44.60. While my first sale came way back in January, this is the true moment to celebrate. When you have something you can put in the bank. It amounts to 10 copies of my book.”

Two selections mentioned food: “I would say I would take the family out to dinner to celebrate, but I don’t think that the check would cover it;” and “ 
I took my first royalty check and bought myself a dinner of fried shrimp & french fries and topped it off with a slice of pie & a half bottle of bubbly! Of course, that means I have about twenty-five cents left, but all in all, it was very a good day.”

The last comes from a website about Charles Dickens:
“Why did Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol?

“He needed the money! He was seriously in debt and he hoped to turn a quick profit from the royalties. As one Biographer described it, his bank manager had given his muse an enthusiastic push. A Christmas Carol was a runaway best seller and Dickens expected his first royalty check to be at least £1000 but due to the high production cost of the book-in part because of his many last minute changes and its expensive materials, he received only £250.”