I remember back when I thought a 3-book deal must be three times better than a 1-book deal. Right?
Yikes. Wrong.
Aspiring authors are so desperate for a deal that getting three of them at once feels like an embarrassment of riches. But look at the yearly earnings for a $100,000 deal for three books. That's going to be broken down into 6 or 9 payments (on signing, on publication, possibly on paperback publication). And that'll be over a 4 or 5 year period. (A year before the book publishes, six month delay before you're paid anything at all, a year between books, a delay on that final payment).
After the agent gets their cut, you're at $85,000. Over 5 years, that's $17,000 a year. This is why traditionally published authors teach creative writing. No shame at all in getting a publishing offer from a major publisher, and no shame in getting a 6-figure offer or a 3-book deal, but until you've seen it play out or you really sit down and go through the schedule of payments, it's hard to appreciate how much work you'll be doing for such little pay.
To hear some people's interpretation of an offer like this, the author suddenly has $100,000 in the bank. And now they're making that as an annual salary. And they are on endcaps and being sent around on 10-city book tours and being interviewed on NPR. Not likely.
Good on Brenna for doing her research, talking to actual writers working in the trenches, and realizing she and her work are worth far more than this. And pity the unpublished who would fall over themselves to give up 5 years of their creative lives for $17,000 annually, only to be dropped like a rock at the end of that time.