The $40K for an untried author is enough to send off warning flares that this is NOT an ordinary transaction.
Another $40,000 after he has not produced a phrase by the original deadline is beyond the bounds of comprehension.
The office and the secretary were provided by Univ of Chicago, in the expectation that he would publish. But he failed to avail himself of these facilities and he and his wife decamped to Bali -- presumably funded by his advance.
Interestingly, there’s a 20 Questions feature on Amazon, with a Q&A about how he wrote the book. My computer’s running slowly tonight, so I’ll dig out the link tomorrow. He said writing the first book was hard, and that he wasn’t sure he could do it. And being a night owl, he writes at night.
Both books were published by Three Rivers Press, the trade paperback imprint of Crown Publishing in NY. It was published in Aug 2004, three years after lhe graduated from Harvard Law School.
Damned impressive contract and advance for a first author. I wonder who the acquisitions editor for the book was, or more significantly, who the decision-maker for this m/s was.