And in my eyes, the author, Jonathan Tropper, had a pretty high profile. But the Wall Street Journal says, “In his spare time, he wrote novels without much commercial success, vowing to write full-time if it could support his family. In 2005, Sony optioned the rights to his third novel, "Everything Changes"—about a 30-something New Yorker who's engaged to one woman, in love with another, and faced with the return of his absent philandering father—in a "high six-figure deal," as he put it. He sold his division of the family business and wrote his fourth book, but it found middling success in America even as Lorne Michaels's production company optioned the film rights. "After four books, I wasn't getting the kind of readership I had hoped for," Mr. Tropper said. Frustrated with how his books were being marketed, he bought himself out of his publishing contract with money lent to him by his literary agency, signed with another house, and began pitching himself as a screenwriter.”
I’m not sure if Tropper was less successful than I thought, or if definition of success was higher than mine. You can read the WSJ story here.