Quote:
Originally Posted by mdibella
It's so easy to imagine that a professional writer makes at least a living salary...writing a book is certainly not a fast or trivial task, and not everyone is capable of it.
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That has never been a publisher's concern, unfortunately. Publishers essentially pay a market rate, often augmented by a cut of the expected profits. The rate is not based on any calculation of how much money a person should make in a given period to make a "living wage."
This has put most authors in the position of working a steady job for that "living wage," and writing books for additional income beyond the "living wage." Some authors would actually work for multiple publishers, or work on multiple concurrent assignments for the same publisher, to make enough cumulatively to equal a good wage, or at least a "living wage." (See the 30s pulp writers, for example.) And some would work for a publisher as a regularly-paid column or staff writer for periodicals, while working on books between assignments or on their own time.
Does this imply that writers are getting "ripped off" by publishers? Not necessarily. There are services publishers provide, like editing, marketing, printing and distribution, that (in a fair world) justify their costs, and the rate they pay writers, to see a profit.
I think it's fair to say that, beyond the lucky "bestseller" writers, the average writer may make a large lump sum from a single book, but overall, the amount of money they make is roughly equal to "hobby money," i.e. a nice addition to your income, but not enough to seriously live off of.