The Advance v. Royalties Conversation Continues

Okay, quick background: Last week I wrote a post arguing against outrageously high book advances and in favor of better royalties for authors. I followed this up with a post arguing that the widely held belief that big advances cause big marketing budgets does not really hold up to scrutiny. (Big advances and big marketing budgets are obviously often correlated, but that does not imply any kind of causal relationship.)

Then I promised a mathy post explaining to publishers why this model makes mor