Book Advances and Marketing and the Cart and the Horse

(If you don't want to read a long and boring blog post about the business of publishing, scroll down for a delightful video in which I help two nerdfighters get engaged. The couple is awfully cute. She's a writer; he's in the USAF.)

Thanks to everyone--nerdfighters, first-time authors, old salts, anonymous editors, heroically nonaonymous editors--who commented on my blog post arguing that smaller advances with better royalties would be better for publisher and author alike. Three counterarguments