In 1686, the Royal Society drained its entire treasury underwriting Francis Willughby's lavishly engraved De Historia Piscium (The History of Fishes). The volume flopped catastrophically, leaving the Society completely broke and unable to finance Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica; Edmond Halley had to step in and fund the publication of Newton's masterwork out of his own pocket, while being partially compensated by the Society in unsold copies of fish books. wikipedia.org