I do whatever Vellum does.

Vellum automatically eliminates widows and eliminates orphans only after a scene break, though I believe those settings are adjustable. Vellum also automatically spread balances (makes sure each set of facing pages have the same number of lines in each.

As far as old-school rules vs looking good, I'm not sure I can think of an example in which those principles conflict, but I'd go with looking good if they did.

RC, I will edit to make the page look good when formatting for paperback because I like having every chapter begin on a new page. So yes, def. no widows or orphans

Publishers are still the way to go if you dream of bestseller lists and movie deals--but most trad published authors don't get either.

Self publishing may be the best shot at making a living. Data from Data Guy (before he vanished behind a paywall) suggested that a few years ago. But most self publishers don't get there.

The bottom line is that any road is going to be a hard road. Write because you love to write. Keep your day job until you've made a living on writing for several months. Celebrate whatever success you get. Have reasonable expectations. These are the keys to a happy life as a writer.

Back in the day, when a romance writer would get her first Harlequin contract and an advance of $1,200, the received wisdom was to plow it all back into promotion. The idea was to create enough sell-through to encourage Harlequin to offer a multi-book contract. At that time, back end royalties for a simple Harlequin could be around $18,000, so diverting the advance to promotion efforts was not using up a large percentage of your total earnings for the book. What I've heard in recent years is that the advance is all you'll get. A far different picture, and I understand the royalty break has hardly budged this century, too.

There remain today good reasons for dealing with trad pubs: them getting your books into physical bookstores, them getting you reviews from big deal reviewers and possibly attention from big name media, and them selling sub rights--especially to film/television/streaming as well as other markets. The value of that may not have a direct dollar figure but it is substantial. But if they don't do anything beyond getting your books into bookstores, they aren't doing their full job. At a conference I went to recently, a veteran publicist said the typical publisher's publicist has 30 titles to work on at a time and job churn is major. It follows that if yours isn't the lead title that month, you're not going to get much attention at all from these overworked people. So self-publishing and self-promotion don't seem like such a bad deal after all. You probably will end up doing more for your book than the publisher would.

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