Slog
News & ArtsMonday, August 15, 2011
Books Tao Lin Lands a $50,000 Book Deal with Vintage Books
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 3:29 PM
The Observer asks Lin if he feels like he's "made it" now and Lin replies:
I honestly feel, to a large degree, like me and everyone else are close to death and that the awareness of this has, to me, precluded thoughts of “making it” (this is a theme of the novel).
That's funny. Also funny: the Stranger parody of Time's profile of Franzen in which Lin profiled himself; the piece Lin wrote for us about the levels of greatness a fiction writer can achieve in America; the piece he wrote about Seattle based entirely on hearsay and seeing people hanging out of windows; and the time he reviewed his Seattle audience when he was here on book tour.
4
See, this is the problem with the book publishing business starting to recover: it starts throwing money at self-impressed hacks.
(Seriously, though, please would you guys just get over Tao Lin already. Just because you unwisely had him write for a you couple times doesn't mean you have to talk him up every time something happens to him.)
(Seriously, though, please would you guys just get over Tao Lin already. Just because you unwisely had him write for a you couple times doesn't mean you have to talk him up every time something happens to him.)
6
$50,000 isn't a lot of money. For comparison, in 1999 dollars, Dave Eggers got $300,000. In 2003 dollars, Jonathan Safran Foer got $500,000. His brother Joshua got $1,200,000 in an advance for his memorizing book a few years ago.
A $50,000 annual salary doesn't go that far in NYC. And it's just like salary. He's got to pay income tax on it -- IRS will get a 1099 form from his publisher, and so it's not $50,000. His agent gets 15% off the top, and that's $7,500. So it's really $42,500 before taxes.
The book won't be out for 2 years at least. Nobody can live on $21,250 minus taxes per year in NYC.
So why isn't this a column on how his new publisher has screwed Tao just like his old one Dennis Johnson at Melville House did, according to Part One of your famous column, denied totally by both Dennis and Tao, and which you never followed up with the promised Part Two, you total creepy clueless loser.
A $50,000 annual salary doesn't go that far in NYC. And it's just like salary. He's got to pay income tax on it -- IRS will get a 1099 form from his publisher, and so it's not $50,000. His agent gets 15% off the top, and that's $7,500. So it's really $42,500 before taxes.
The book won't be out for 2 years at least. Nobody can live on $21,250 minus taxes per year in NYC.
So why isn't this a column on how his new publisher has screwed Tao just like his old one Dennis Johnson at Melville House did, according to Part One of your famous column, denied totally by both Dennis and Tao, and which you never followed up with the promised Part Two, you total creepy clueless loser.
7
$50,000 isn't a lot of money. For comparison, in 1999 dollars, Dave Eggers got $300,000. In 2003 dollars, Jonathan Safran Foer got $500,000. His brother Joshua got $1,200,000 in an advance for his memorizing book a few years ago.
A $50,000 annual salary doesn't go that far in NYC. And it's just like salary. He's got to pay income tax on it -- IRS will get a 1099 form from his publisher, and so it's not $50,000. His agent gets 15% off the top, and that's $7,500. So it's really $42,500 before taxes.
The book won't be out for 2 years at least. Nobody can live on $21,250 minus taxes per year in NYC.
So why isn't this a column on how his new publisher has screwed Tao just like his old one Dennis Johnson at Melville House did, according to Part One of your famous column, denied totally by both Dennis and Tao, and which you never followed up with the promised Part Two, you total creepy clueless loser.
A $50,000 annual salary doesn't go that far in NYC. And it's just like salary. He's got to pay income tax on it -- IRS will get a 1099 form from his publisher, and so it's not $50,000. His agent gets 15% off the top, and that's $7,500. So it's really $42,500 before taxes.
The book won't be out for 2 years at least. Nobody can live on $21,250 minus taxes per year in NYC.
So why isn't this a column on how his new publisher has screwed Tao just like his old one Dennis Johnson at Melville House did, according to Part One of your famous column, denied totally by both Dennis and Tao, and which you never followed up with the promised Part Two, you total creepy clueless loser.
10
. . .funny, i remember tao lin stating on numerous occasions that he would never publish his work on anything but an independent press . . .
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