Quote:
Originally Posted by sirbruce
While making money by writing is now harder than ever before, it's actually not that impossible. You don't have to get on the bestseller lists.
Let's say your book sells paperback only, for $6, you get $0.60 per sale. If you sell only 20,000 copies -- a modest amount -- you'll earn $12,000. Write two books a year, and you get $24,000. Okay, that's not a lot... but you can live off that in many areas of the country.
And that's just in the first year. Next year you'll have 2 more books out, and your first 2 books will still be selling. Eventually you may sell 5,000 - 10,000 copies in one week and get on the bestseller lists. This will spurn more sales, better deals, etc. 10 years down the road, and you'll have money coming in just from all the reprints and foreign rights even if you still haven't hit the bigtime.
Again, Moejoe continues to offer the fallacy of false choice: either you write for a LOT of money, which is unlikely, or you write because you enjoy it, in which case you should expect no money at all. Do you think Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon are rich? No, they live modest home in Oklahoma for a reason: it's cheap.
Moejoe, if you're happy with writing for free, that's great. But don't tell other writers that they're wrong for wanted to get paid for their work, or that they have to be Dan Brown to make a living at it.
|
So you've got to write two books a year AND sell 20,000 copies of each one to make a living? Not only do you have to have those two books published in a market that is steadily taking less and less chances on any kind of midlist, but you've got to sell 20,0000 copies. And you have to do all this in a market where 195,000 new books are produced each year, a lot of those in competition with yours and also a new front of 'free' and 'indie published', heavily discounted' authors also competing against your 'priced' merchandise.
And let's address the 20,000 copies theory while we're at it. You're highly unlikely to get anything more than 10,000 - 15,000 on a print run if you're a midlist or new author, and after your advance you'd then need to sell a further 8,000 books (if the advance is in the $5,000 region) before you even start earning. Your mythical 20,000 copies sold at $0.60 profit is not what's going to happen in reality. Especially now with more and more alternatives available, and more competition coming along every day.
Eric Flint -
http://baens-universe.com/articles/T...ics_of_Writing
Quote:
|
Most published authors derive only incidental income from their writing, and even most writers who get published regularly don’t make enough from sales of their work to be able to make a living as full-time writers.
|
Now, I hope with all my heart that any writer who seeks the traditional route of publication can make a steady living from their writing. I really do. But I believe that approaching writing as a for-profit game in the first instance is a grand delusion when faced with the actual market and the odds stacked against the author. Why not forget about the money, write because you love to write, and then everything monetary or good that comes afterwards is a bonus on top of what you already get from writing?