People are delusional. Most books sell less than 5000 copies their entire lifetime. Most illustrators are LARPing freelancers who get paid in exposure.
I hope the money was worth tanking the good will of the brand. I wish I could code successful apps and the undermine my principles for meager amounts of money and fuck off into the woods
People want to belong to something bigger than them. This includes a magical cloudy sky kingdom where you must wear white shrouds, and your whole family is there and not talking about embarrassingly antiquated political views
Run your own if you can and use something like Akkoma that's lighter on resources