My book was a failure. I won't ever make a penny from it beyond the advance, but it did lead to career opportunities.

Petro with her book.

Melissa Petro Melissa Petro's 2023 book advance didn't translate into the expected book sales she had hoped for.

Despite a six-figure advance, Petro's book sold only 2,000 copies in its first year.

Petro's book did lead to new opportunities, such as ghostwriting, despite failing to meet sales goals.

When I sold a book in a six-figure deal back in 2023 , I thought my whole life would change.

For starters, that amount of money — for a book I had been working on for free for the past 20-plus years — felt like a windfall.

Given the size of my advance, it was safe to assume my publisher was positioning it as a "big book": a highly anticipated title launched with a major marketing push and significant financial backing, expected to be a commercial success.

The book was deeply personal and provocative, tracing my journey as a former sex worker and survivor of mass-media humiliation turned stay-at-home mom, and what that experience might teach us all about shame.

Given the outsized response to some of my earlier essays, I anticipated attention.

I also feared catastrophic fallout.

All the hate mail would be worth it, I told myself, because opportunities would come knocking anyway — emails in my inbox, speaking gigs, and other prestigious, lucrative offers.

Then the book came out — and crickets.

It was like throwing my heart into an ocean of content I watched it bob along the media landscape for a week or so, competing with other new titles and whatever else was making waves.

I was buoyed by a speaking event at the 92nd Street Y with Kiese Laymon , and being flown to D.C. to appear in conversation with Charlotte Clymer felt equally surreal.