. . . comes from people who have been there, done that.

A few weeks ago, I put up a post about a discussion at Booksquare on whether writers would be better off producing books as work-for-hire (as opposed to the way it’s typically done today: writers receive an advance against royalties, and then later additional royalties should the advance earn out).

Now Tess Gerritsen weighs in with her experience. After publishing nine romantic suspense novels for Harlequin, she hit the NYT bestseller list with another book, Harvest. Reprints of her old titles, she writes,

started appearing in bookstores. Not just here in the U.S., but around the world. These were titles that I thought had long since finished earning out, and would never be seen again. And suddenly, they were selling again, and selling well, and now I’m being paid royalties that add up to many times the original advances I was first paid.

That’s money she never would have seen if she’d sold her early books as work-for-hire.