My royalty check from sales of the hiking book for the last 6 months came to $35. There was a time when the check was for several hundred dollars. It was never a vast amount, but a lot more cheering somehow. I remember years ago visiting Costco in Charleston and seeing books from my publisher there at vast discounts and feeling sad, knowing that that day would come for me. It has come.
I'm sure the book itself is still going great guns, or good enough. What happened was that my writing partner, reasonably, concluded that I wasn't going to get going on the second edition. I had failed to do so over a period of years, although not so much out of laziness as out of having a car that was failing on me and a limited desire to get caught up a mountain with a disabled vehicle. So he bought my rights to the second edition. Then he failed to do anything about the new edition, too, and the publisher got somebody else to do it. But he still gets royalties as the original author. Granted I got paid for my rights, but I did the same he did on the second (i.e., nothing) and get bupkis in perpetuity. I'm not bitter or mad; just amused as ever about what a brilliant businessman I am.
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