[bgalbrecht]

I finally read the article, and it's hard not to knock Rupert Thomson for having unreasonable expectations. This is a guy who has written 9 novels and a memoir in 26 years, and he's complaining about it being too hard to make a living. I'm not sure what he considers a comfortable living, but let's say £50,000/year. If all of his books are still in print, and are past the 20K copies sold (likely for books in print more than a year or so), and the web page that I found that said 12% was typical rate for over 20K copies sold, that means that for him to live on the royalties alone, he'd need to have those ten books sell about 50,000 copies per year (looking at Amazon UK prices around £8 per book), or have a contract for a book with expectations to sell at least 50K copies the first year. Maybe as an acclaimed award winning author, he can command higher royalties and advances, but only if his books are expected to sell higher volumes.

I mainly read SF and fantasy, and between my acquaintances with SF/F authors and the SF/F author autobiographies I've read, the fact of the matter is that very few authors sell enough books that they only have to come out with a new book once every 2-3 years. Most authors have to write at least one new book a year, or rely on other forms of income, and my guess is that rarely do they have anything but a home office.