I finally have a Kofi page! ko-fi.com/markstaywriter
‘What’s a Kofi page?’ you may ask. It’s a place where delightful people like your good self can donate small amounts of money to poor, wretched writers like me. ‘Hang on,’ you continue, folding your arms and narrowing your eyes, ‘you’ve written films and had books published by big publishers… Shouldn’t you be loaded?’
Yes. Yes, I should… But I was paid for Unwelcome three years ago (almost to the day!) and that was the equivalent of two years’ salary of my old job. And because Warner Bros much such a limp effort of promoting it that it will never earn its budget back and I’ll never get the fifty grand of my fee that I deferred just before filming (won’t make that mistake again).
Nautilus, the Disney+ TV show that was my idea has been filmed and is in post-production, but has just been dropped by Disney so I won’t be seeing any money from that soon.
And yes, I have been published by the likes of Simon & Schuster, but it wasn’t a huge advance and I’m on a joint accounting contract which means I don’t start earning royalties until the first three books have earned out (to learn more about how all this nonsense works, click here).
And also yes, I have been self-publishing a few of my books, but that’s also an expensive business and turning into a bit of a money pit…
So if you like my stuff and you’ve bought all the books and seen the films, then do please consider dropping three quid in the Kofi tip jar. I reckon if 231 of you do it, I might just be able to pay my overdraft off. I’ll be popping all my blog posts and other exclusive bits and bobs over on Kofi, too, so it won’t just be me panhandling. Pop over have a look… ko-fi.com/markstaywriter