A long time ago I took a hard look at teh economics of tradpub and realized that my anxiety is of the specific type that will not allow me to have tradpub as my sole source of income. Even if I hit the solid midlist career status (my actual plans, as opposed to daydreams, never included "Nora Roberts/Stephen King/John Grisham levels of sales) I would be stressing over whether I could pay the mortgage.

I don't know exactly what the solution is if we assume that capitalism continues to be the ruling model, but damn, the present status sucks.