This kind of thing actually happens in many industries when the money is “too easy” at the beginning. Most writers I know would be thrilled to get a $25k advance today (let alone a $100k advance, let’s not even mention the $250k advance…). Self publishing forces you to learn about what sells/moves copies and what doesn’t. The traditional publishing process is meant to isolate the writer from the publishing business. This was ok when there were less books being published and everyone read the same books but today with the wide variety of books and less homoegeneity in readers it’s much more important to know how to sell books than to get big advances, as this cautionary tale shows. It was definitely an interesting read!