The problems of publishing

So everyone's talking about:

Kaavya Viswanathan, Harvard sophomore and author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, has been
accused of lifting passages from two previous young-adult books, The Harvard
Crimson reported on Sunday.

Well I was interning at Little, Brown when her proposal was being shopped around. I read it. I wasn't impressed. Granted it was packaged nice--the proposal kept talking about how young she was, how she was going to Harvard, etc. But the writing was fairly sub-par but that's not surprising, publishing these days doesn't necessarily look for stellar writing. It's about a package (can we turn her into a star, she's just so cute). But I guess I didn't have to tell you that.

But the real problem is why, oh why would a publisher pay a 17 year-old unknown writer, 500,000 for two books? Why does she need this sort of advance? Don't get it twisted, this isn't hate in my words, it's logic.

Even if her books were to be a big hit (and they just might still since America loves to read writing that has some sort of controversy attached to it and according to the article, the Bookscan number was already 8,000 copies in less than a month), these type of advances are hurting, not helping publishing. Especially when publishing is an industry quick to complain: we don't have any month to send you on a tour, we don't have any money to purchase coop for your book. Why? Because they just paid 500,000 to a 17-year old and now must spend more money on marketing in efforts to see their investment recouped.