Youre pretty good illustrator with a pen and paper and your passion is manga, your favourite series being Hunter X Hunter. Youve begun work on your own graphic novel, but its slow going and between school and your kitchen job at Pizza Hut you only have a 5-10 hours per week to work on it. Including plot re-workings and revisions to the design of your characters, youre thinking it could take five years to complete it. However, if you could interest a publisher in it at that time, it could sell for half-a-million. You would like to ask a publisher for an advancethat is, some payment up front, so you could reduce your hours at Pizza Hut and spend more time drawing. If interest rates hover around 9% over this time span, what would that half-million be worth in todays dollars?