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The Rental Life: What Happens When You Own Nothing and They Own You

In July 2009, Amazon reached into the Kindle devices of thousands of customers and deleted copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. The company had discovered that the third-party publisher selling those editions lacked the rights to distribute them in the United States. Amazon issued refunds. Then it erased the books. A high school student in Michigan lost his annotated copy mid-assignment. A class-action lawsuit followed. Amazon’s CEO called the decision “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” The company settled and promised not to do it again, unless a court ordered it, or unless the company determined it was necessary to protect consumers from malicious code, or unless the consumer failed to keep paying.

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Stop Paying Rent on Your Own Words!

Stop paying rent on your own words. For decades, writers were taught that “real” authors have representation, an agent, sometimes even a manager, as if legitimacy were a credential issued by an industry gatekeeper. That belief was formed in an older media economy: fewer publishers, fewer channels, slower production cycles, and a cultural aura around scarcity. In 2026, the belief is not merely old fashioned. It is often financially irrational, and for many authors it is the single most reliable way to give away a permanent slice of income that should remain theirs.

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Revealing the Terms

The great thing about living in New York City is that everyone is in the same boat when it comes to making rent or paying the mortgage:  It Hurts!  

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Books are Written for Buying

Books are written for purchasing and forever saving.

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Renting the American Dream

After 20 years of renting a life on the East Coast — that’s what you do out here because purchasing an apartment or a house is incredibly expensive because the AVERAGE price of a one-bedroom apartment in New York City is now a cool $1,000,000.00 USD — we are now thinking it might be best to look into buying our share of the American Dream instead of renting it away.

99.99% of the people we know rent. Where do we start to buy? Can you do it all with a bank loan or do you have to bring a chunk of your own saved money for a down payment to the table first? Do you find a real estate agent at the start of the process or only at the finish? Is now a good time to buy an apartment or a house?

Is there a New York neighborhood or town or village reachable by train near New York City that would be more affordable than Manhattan or Queens? I know there are books and magazines dedicated to this topic, but sometimes there are hidden self-interests in those publications.