So the other day, on Twittex, I smacked down someone who demanded we make all our books free, and got the most puzzling question from a bystander.
To clarify the person who thought all books should be free, it’s because they make the writers so little money, why bother, since we do it for the luv.
Now this is not true, of course, but also even if it were, no. I’ve seen what an entire field of people writing for the love means: in Portugal it doesn’t pay. As in at all. It’s so prestigious, and the market so small that most people just write for free.
The result is a market that is really not for entertainment nor designed to reach a broad swath of the population. Which in turn worsens the problem, of course.
Anyway, so I mentioned — true — that in my case it’s been some years since I didn’t make at least a low salary form writing. (I compare myself to underpaid secretary most of the time. Though with various fundraising means, and the blog, I’m now making more than that.) And the innocent and eager bystander rushed in and asked — I think, it’s been some days, but this was the gist — “Are you living from royalties now, or do you still need to write.”
I pointed out that there’s no such thing as “living form royalties, traditional or indy” and one always needs to write. He then clarified that he thought once you ‘Made it’ you could live on a book every few years.
And so, here we are, and here is the topic. Do writers make money? How much money do writers make? And those traditionally published writers are rolling in it compared to indies, right?
This makes me profoundly uncomfortable as a topi, because you know, I was brought up to not discuss money in public. More importantly, it is a big taboo in traditional writing, because it can cause strife among authors for the same house, and so you don’t mention it. It’s one of the ways to get blacklisted. So, we all assume everyone else is making more money.
And the public? The public assumes we’re making piles and piles of money. They’ve seen Castle, and other writing shows, and we’re not fooling them. All writers are millionaires.
A friend whose husband was unemployed took a job stocking at Target at night, while her book was on offer in the book section.
One of her co-workers made the connection, and came to her with the book, saying “I know who you are. So, are you researching for your next book? Because there’s no way you need this job.”
As happens — this was almost 20 years ago — she’d got a 5k advance for that book. Paid in three parts — but wait, I’ll explain that — over a year and a half. Now it would be more likely to be 2.5 K as it was only her second book.
But in the public mind? Pshaw, we’re all millionaires.
Anyway, pull up a rock. Here we go:
When I broke in (the sale, the book came out 2001) the last days of 1999, the standard advance was 5k. And it was divided in either three or two payments. Since I sold on proposal, it was three. One on contact signing, one one delivery of the book and one on publication.
I was excited — and the money paid for shoes for the kids (they were growing out of shoes faster than we could track) and a weekend in Denver, and I THINK repairs on my car (It’s been a while.) So, it wasn’t inconsiderable, but you know, that was over a year and a half (the payment) so it wasn’t precisely a salary.
That two– if you sell on manuscript — or three if you sell on proposal division is normal for all advances. But it can be divided in more. If you hear of someone getting a million dollars advance — or anything over 100k — it’s sometimes divided in ten parts, and the last parts only get paid for performance. Like, if you sell above a certain level. Or if it sells foreign rights to x number of countries. These performance bonuses rarely get paid, but the size of the advance is publicity, so the publisher does it this way (and isn’t kidding anyone) so the can say “We gave a million dollar advance for this.” Oh, sorry, they are fooling the buying public and maybe some publicity people.
The biggest advance I ever made — not counting collaboration and that wasn’t markedly more — in a 25 year traditional career was 12.5k.
This was exceeded by the money I made the first year on my first indie novel — Witchfinder — which was 18k. (Note when I was bragging about this to someone at comicon, he was shocked, because that wasn’t very much. Ah.)
Usually I made between 20k and 35k a year, unless it was an exceptional year or a really unexpectedly bad one. How?
Well, I wrote short stories — a lot of them. I was on a list of people to call if you had a hole in your anthology. — I wrote more than one book a year. And on one signal year, I sold a lot of audio rights to short stories. Oh, I also did some write for hire, and some ghost writing. (Both of those paid way better than the regular writing.)
Royalties? Until I started working for Baen I didn’t get a royalty check. Books would earn out and be taken out of print the same day. Baen did pay royalties, and some years, to be fair, I got as much in royalties as in advances. Thereby maintaining my average income on years when things were lean.
I’d like to point out, just for the sake of explaining to those who are new, that traditional and indie are not really the same when it comes to work.
I often wrote six books a year for traditional publishers, which is a killing schedule. Six books for indie is okay (though note, no, I haven’t achieved it. The last few years have been “fun.”)
This is because if you’re writing six books trad, you’re working for at least two houses, more likely three. And they refuse to admit you work for anyone else, when not ACTIVELY sabotaging each other. Remember when you were in school and each teacher thought he was the only one assigning work? Like that.
Your copyedited manuscript for book A will come in and need to be gone over just as you’re on the final phase of book B. Or worse, while you’re finishing edits on book B. Add in book C and D And E And F…. at one time I regularly went to a hotel for a week, alone, when this sort of thing happened, to be able to finish everything on time.
Also, trad books are always a minimum length of 90k to 100k words — though they usually prefer 120k — while in indie, anything over 40k is a book and likely a “short novel.” So you can pace yourself.
Other than that, both models reward writing more or less continuously.
There are differences. In trad, your royalties peter out fast. The most you’ll get is the first year, after which the royalties become negligible. In indie, as long as you’re putting something out every two months, it revives royalties for all your back list. And if you have a long tail, it can be very sweet indeed. This is because of the distribution model for traditional, and the fact that the bookstores treat books as produce that spoils, and remove it if it’s not selling fast.
But indie too needs you to publish every so often, or royalties dwindle to nothing or close to. There is a theory that if you have enough of a longtail, it will feed itself, but I don’t bet on it. At this point I intend to die with hands on the keyboard.
Oh, and if you need to know, my second highest grossing within the first year book was Other Rhodes, which made me 14k and because that was the year we were moving provoked a minor crisis when husband was doing accounting at year’s end and trying to figure out how much we owed. He wasn’t counting on that much, see.
So, what about those writers who make millions?
Oh, they exist! But it’s kind of like winning the lottery, in either trad or indie. In trad, it usually means your book got all the push, for whatever reason. You’re either a celebrity, or you know someone (to get that level of push) or you are J.K. Rowling. In either case, if you’re nobody coming in, it’s so unlikely it’s akin to winning the lottery.
Same with getting someone to take an option on one of your books or even short stories. it can run into hundreds of thousands, and while it doesn’t set you up for life, it’s very nice indeed.
The only really big difference in income distribution trad and indie, is that there are more writers in indie making “a living wage” if they put out four or five books a year. (Remember the books are shorter.) And that the ramp up is a little longer. If you go trad, you get handed usually now 2.5k in three installments (don’t spend it all in the same place!) for your first book. If you go indie, book one and two and maybe even three might make you nothing, unless you get lucky. Usually you start to see some movement of the needle after book ten, if they’re all in the same series and/or genre. If you’re like me and a weirdo who writes all over the place and under three names…. it takes a few more books. (Doesn’t really apply to me, because I came in with a following, but new writers.)
So, that’s it. It’s not a sinecure. It’s a job. You work at it, and you get paid.
If you’re looking to make lots of money and never working again, you’re looking at the wrong kind of “book.”
But if you’re willing to work at it, plan strategically, and keep writing? You have a chance of making a decent living.
And I don’t see who could ask for more.
Mad Genius Club 
33 responses to “A Paying Gig”
Larry Correia’s Official Alphabetical List of Author Success comes very much to mind: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/07/24/the-official-alphabetical-list-of-author-success/
I’ve moved up from S to N or M! (But restaurant prices have gone up and I spent the money on a cover for the next book… lol)
Larry’s list is awesome. I’m at N or M, but am in research mode, so not writing much. So all momentum lost.
Probably a K or J. I’ve made well over a quarter-million through writing income. That sounds impressive until you realize that’s the accumulated income of over 20 years. (Do the math. You’ll laugh.) I probably make more in 2-3 years on the day job than over my whole writing career.
I’ve heard the median writing income is around $10,000/year. If so, I am above the median today. It’s above a 40-hr a week minimum wage job, so there is that.
But I write because it’s fun and because it’s a financial sheet anchor to windward when the economy gets bad. Having multiple income streams really helps when you get laid off from the day job. Plus what else would I do with my time?
I am at the stage in my life where I could quit the day job and write full time. I could certainly double or triple my writing income if I wrote full time. I might even make half what I do at the day job annually. With my other income sources that is enough to live comfortably. That was my plan until 2021, when I got a dream day job that made me put that off. So my list of Books I Want To Write Before I Die gets longer, while the time to write them gets shorter.
But like Sarah, I will probably die with a keyboard in my hand.
I’m no longer surprised by how many people
a) have no understanding of economics
b) have never had to pay a bill
and
c) have always been supported by someone else so who needs money?
In Jane Friedman’s book about the business of writing (can’t remember the title), she actually devoted a section to “should you ask for money”. “Should you get paid.” “Should you want to earn more money than a pittance.”
Unbelievable.
The people who talk like this have never wondered how to pay a bill.
One additional point.
When we discuss the writing business at local events (which are nearly always unpaid), I make a point of saying that the smaller your monthly nut, the easier it is. If you’ve minimized your expenses, it’s easier to break even.
Even so, as dear son points out, we’d make more $$ boating chicken at Hershey Park.
I’m reminded of a Canadian professor who explained, over adult libations, “I teach for free. They pay me to grade.” I’d write for free, if that elusive Someone would pay for covers, and formatting, and distribution, and all that other stuff. Stuff like utilities, and medical expenses, and groceries, and …
Looking at long-tail sales, the Cat series is basically done in terms of interest, because I’ve not written in that world for five years or so. Ditto Colplatschki. The Merchant books, Familiars stories, and Shikari bring in revenue, and the Elect also brings in some. As Sarah says, you HAVE to keep writing and releasing to keep interest and income flowing. Love it or hate it, readers have gotten away from the idea that one book every 18 months from an author is great productivity (certain romance writers always an exception).
I think I’m a K on Larry’s list. I’d earned enough over the past three years to cover most of my medical bills for 2023, Thanks Be. I have two books in the can and ready for edits, one 2/3 done, and one started, plus short story ideas for two anthologies. I just need to put rump in chair and work without Life throwing more curve balls.
I have three literally mid-done. No, wait. Five if you count the serialized ones. But time in chair is scarce this side of the screen. That needs to change.
Yeah, I’m lingering somewhere between J and K myself. In a good month, I can pay some bills with royalties, or income from the Teeny Publishing Bidness. It’s kind of discouraging, though – to realize that one year, I made more for ghostwriting a book for someone else than I made from any of my newer releases…
I can support MYSELF if I lived alone, and carefully. With Dan and five cats? not a hope. that needs to change, because, well… life is uncertain. I don’t think I’ll linger much if he goes, but you never know, and I hate not having the resources.
reminds me of Farmers. Farmers are totally Obvs RICH!!! /sarc. Well, some do make “Rich money” but then the Tractor needs work, fuel, taxes on the acres, oh, yeah, and likely he makes all that money once a year, maybe a similar or smaller shot a second time a year, depending on crop and area (Texas Corn farmers can often get 2 crops a growing season) and well, then he has to buy all the seed, chemicals etc for the next season. and, and, and
I could probably eat out alone at Applebees on a semi-annual or quarterly basis using royalty money, so I guess I’m somewhere between N and M on the alphabetical ranking. Shrug. I finally got around to adding a list of links to my other books on amazon to the back of all my books, including the non-KU ones, so we’ll see if that improves the conversion rate from permafreebies to their paid sequels at all.
Just going to keep writing the things I like and figuring out how to market them later, dropping rose petals down the Grand Canyon like Wodehouse(?) said. Maybe someday I’ll find my place on the Readers’ Interests Venn Diagram, and have some blockbuster character/setting that I have to keep writing long after I feel like killing him/her/it off. Won’t be today though.
I need to do that.
I need to update all mine. And maybe a separate link to the next in series right at the end. And then learn to market them . . .
Something that worked out well for me (in terms of ease of use) was just making a page at the back of the new release for all the books I had to date (easier when you have a nine-book backlist like me, not counting the three in one), creating links to the amazon pages, and then saving that page out as a separate document and adding the new release as a title/link to the separate document once I had an amazon page for it. Then copy-pasted or added that separate page to the source documents for each of the backlist books, & uploaded to Amazon. It would probably be a lot more work for people at your or Pam’s level of experience and backlist, but it did seem to streamline a process I had been dreading and if that helps anyone else to do the same, am happy to babble about it. 🙂
In Academia you write, but never get paid, but if you don’t get lots of publications you don’t get to keep your teaching gig. Elsewhere in the technical publishing world you write for the prestige but you don’t get paid. Anything written on a government grant is public domain from the start (in my experience.) The only way to make money in technical writing is to write a textbook and make it mandatory for your class…
Right, but I’m not really addressing technical writing, which I’ve never done. I’m speaking about fiction writing.
Amusedly remembering the (Indian) Professor of Pharmacology (maybe dept.chairman) in med. school who started every lecture, “Please, buymybuuk.” I don’t think anyone did but a couple people xeroxed the whole thing in the library.
I am quite confident that I shall earn more money writing than I will as a star player in the NBA. (Age: 63. Height: 5′ 11″. Weight: 195 lb.)
In fact, I have already earned more money writing than as a star player in the NBA. (Three figures, ignore that decimal point.)
I was making six figures in my day job. (Eight, if you ignore the punctuation again. On the other hand, I’m home to cook dinner on most days. I’m not driving to work and back, in the dark, in July. I’m sleeping through most nights without waking up with acid indigestion caused by problems at work. The boss is a bit of pain in the rear, though…)
More money will come, eventually, hopefully, although not as much as before. I figure that I’ll actually live long enough to start making it – and be able to enjoy it.
The money does increase, the more you write. And the more following you get.
I calculate my sales on the basis of how many Taco Bell Chicken Chalupa Meals I can buy with my earnings (these days, that’s nearly $12-13).
First month, I can afford to eat once a week.
Second month, maybe once every other week.
Third month…once a month…maybe…
And it goes down from there really quick.
The problem in writing faster for me is that it’s hard for me to get into “fiction writing brain” mode outside of a carefully moderated amount of stress, quiet, and boredom. When I did copywriting work for a marketing company, writing was easy-take the copy, create it, and add a good spin to it. Which makes me better than ChatGPT, but finding that “right spin” was always tricky, as that required me to read the customer’s mind. And using old stuff didn’t help because they wanted “something punchy” and there isn’t a lot of punch you can do with an Instagram post for a construction equipment rental company without the customer helping you out.
(New photos would have been nice, or some stories I could have shared, or “our most popular kind of backhoe”…)
Fiction takes a lot of juggling. Which is why I’m not living on my writing right now.
I’ve been having that issue too.
I’m going to try and see if Facebook marketing builds up my numbers any. Small ad buy, probably $100-150 or so. If I make back $200-300, we’ll see about something larger.
My experience with Google advertising for a retail store is that we got -nothing- from it. Nada. Zippo. Whereas an ad in the local town paper did have a noticable return. Not a great one, but you could see the difference.
An indy author acquaintance reports that if you spend all your book income on Amazon ads your sales will go up… as long as you keep putting the profit money into the ads. Which amounts to you working for free, and that is -before- taxes.
It will be good to hear how you make out on Facebook.
I’m not optimistic, as it’ll be a small ad buy. But an ad buy is better than nothing at all.
And Google marketing is a hideously arcane art that is very easily gamed and tricked and manipulated. I only knew a little before I lost my job and I’m trying to learn a bit more.
(For retail, brick and mortar locations-Google Business Profile, many and new photos, Instagram and even a simple website with a good landing page is what drives customers to you.)
I got a Baen short story signed by the author. I made sure to interrupt the crew meeting just so the other stagehands could say ???? Because yeah he had a day job. I still have the book and as far as I know he’s still a stagehand.
There was a time when about ten or so books in your backlist meant you could quit, or so I have heard. That was before Thor Power Tools.
For folks who are not familiar:
https://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/05/how-thor-power-hammered-publishing/
“…while in indie, anything over 40k is a book and likely a “short novel.”
and “…Usually you start to see some movement of the needle after book ten, if they’re all in the same series and/or genre.”
This is actually quite encouraging. I actually have ten books sitting here written now. I’ve been slacking off hard on publishing, because the last two published pieces of mine did not make me the price of a case of beer. That plus October pretty much took the wind out of my sails.
I can probably manage a pretty decent 40K story every couple of months. Yee haw!
October took the wind out of my sails too. What happened far away broke something in me. It’s weird. And the idiots over here didn’t help.
Look, there are no guarantees, but every two months is what I’ve heard/seen work.
What happened far away was a watershed moment. What’s happening in my damn fool country as a result, that’s adding insult to injury.
But, we can’t eat rage. I will proceed as if the world will continue to spin on.
Truthfully I’m spending -too much- time writing lately and not really doing anything else, so breaking out and publishing, getting back into the shop, these things shall be done. Ghu forbid there should be a couple of bucks from it.
I happened to stumble on this post, Sarah. Of course, I’ve not sold one story, all I have ever received is, “thanks, but.” Do you think trying shorter novels indie might be a better way to get something out there in the market? Of course, I have no illusions about fitting in to today’s traditional publishing world. It seems like even if you do it yourself, it takes money to edit, format, make a cover, etc into something a random browser would consider paying you for. I see that marketing will cost too. What kind of chance is there for the new, older writer to even make one sale in the short story market, or the novel market?
Too many seem to think Tom Clancy’s career is the norm, not the wild exception. And don’t realize how little of the cover price actually goes to the author.
I was up to about “N” rank in terms of money just before I ran out of steam 4 years ago. Zero completed stories since then. I do very rarely feel compelled to gush forth a page or so, or tinker with the roadmap for my “novel not in progress” (actually several scattered bits that together can’t really be called an outline). Now maybe 1 or 2 Amazon sales a year so I could maybe afford a candy bar per year.