Vera called back on Thursday.
Not Friday when I was expecting her. Thursday afternoon while I was sitting at my father's dining table with spreadsheets open on my laptop and Eli's nursery paintings spread across the other end of the table because he had insisted they needed to dry properly and the dining table was apparently the best place for that.
I picked up on the second ring.
"I've been thinking about your pitch," Vera said.
"Okay," I said carefully.
"The revenue model needs work," she said. "The writer compensation structure is too generous in the first year. You'll bleed money before you find your footing."
"Writers are the product," I said. "If I underpay them I get mediocre content and mediocre content means no readers and no readers means no platform."
Silence.
"Fair poin
