Some good thoughts from Scalzi on how the old adage of “Money should always flow TO the writer,” applies to indie publishers. But I agree more with the sentiment expressed in the comments, where Yog’s Law needs no corollary as long as you realize you wear different hats as author and publisher when you go independent. As publisher, you have to expect to expend some cash for editing, layout, proofing, cover design, and marketing, but you have to manage the level of those expenses such that the version of yourself wearing the Author hat is still netting a profit from royalties.

Note, THIS is why I follow writers like Scalzi (though I also enjoy his books and think he can affect a pithy and enjoyable degree of snark) and Larry Correia. I hate it when Mom (Scalzi) and Dad (Correia) engage in ideological Twitter fights, talking past one another and letting snark override reason. They are both fun authors, but they are also political matter and antimatter. And it’s especially frustrating because each of their core arguments on the issue of rape culture and self defense are right in certain ways, but wrong at their strawman extremes. Aaaaaand if you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry. I enjoyed the argument from a schadenfreude perspective, but wince that these two ideological sides of pro sci-fi-dom can’t get along better. And, for my part, I think Correia won the argument but then got torpedoed by emotional histrionics so that he came out the worse among the Hoi polloi.

Yog’s Law and Self-Publishing.