Were publishing companies hiring authors for millions of dollars?<p>I know authors usually use publishers for review &#x2F; editing &#x2F; publication, but I&#x27;m not aware of a time where the relationship was not &quot;publisher gets X% cut of revenue&quot;. When was it &quot;author gets X million dollars&quot;?<p>The same applies to music. Pretty much every creative industry outside film is paying the performers or creators a percentage of sales. Its just harder for that to scale to endeavors that take thousands of people like modern blockbusters.