Every morning, every evening
Ain’t we got fun?
Not much money, oh, but honey
Ain’t we got fun?
By PJ Parrish
Well, I am feeling pretty flush today. Got our November royalty statement from Thomas & Mercer for our book She’s Not There and I made $46.27. Hey, not too shabby for a book that came out six years ago. Then I got a royalty check from my ex-agent for one of our early Louis Kincaid book for $4.56. To top things off, I found a five dollar bill while walking the dogs yesterday.
So I figure now I can almost afford that nice bottle of Sancerre I’ve been eyeing.
Seriously — and we must be serious if we are talking about book revenue — I’ve been doing some thinking about what motivates us poor souls to keep writing. And let’s be honest — because we must be honest when it comes to money, right? — making a living at the writing thing is what any sane person aims for.
But man, it’s not easy.
I read an article in Publishers Weekly the other day. It was about an Author’s Guild survey of novelists’ income for 2022. I almost wasn’t going to write about this today because, darn it, we don’t need any more reasons to be depressed. But I think there’s a nickel lining in this.
I’m going to give you the highlights of the survey here in plain-speak because PW tends to get obtuse when it comes to money. If you want to read the whole thing, click here. Here goes:
The survey breaks down its numbers by types of authors (full time vs part, traditional vs self). The nut takeaway is that most authors don’t come near to making a living from their craft. Well, duh…
In 2022, according to 5,699 published authors who responded, the median gross pre-tax income from their books was $2,000. If you combine that with other writing-related income, it jumped to $5,000. That’s actually up 9% from the year before, adjusted for inflation. Most that increase came from full-time authors. (Their income was up 20% vs part-timers who saw a 4% decline.)
You still there? Come on, stay with me. If you wanna be a pony soldier, you gotta mount up.
The survey points out that having other income-generating activities made a big difference — stuff like teaching, editing, ghost-writing, conducting events, or journalism. This is what the survey calls “combined income.” The combined income of full-time, established authors (those who had written a book in 2018 or before) rose 21% from 2018 to 2022. But it was still only $23,329 — below poverty level. Income from books alone went from $9,997 to $12,000. In other words, don’t quit your day job.
Our biz is still a story of the haves and have-nots. The survey found that the top 10% of established authors who participated in the survey had median book income of $275,000 last year. On the flip side, the bottom 50% had median book income of $1,300. The rich get royalties, the poor get sofa change.
I’ll wait while you go top off that scotch…
What about traditional vs self-publishing? Well, PW suggests there’s an emerging trend here. Book-related income for full-time self-published authors was $10,200 — much less than full-time traditionally published authors, who earned $15,000. BUT….full-time self-published authors more than doubled their book income in 2022 compared to 2018, to $19,000. Over that time, established full-time traditionally published trade authors’ book income only rose 11%, to $15,000.
What does this mean? That self-published authors are now significantly more effective at boosting their earnings than their experienced traditionally published counterparts. But we all here already sort of knew this, right?
And get this…
Publishers may be paying more attention to the threat from self-publishing. Newer full-time traditionally published authors saw their income rise in 2022 to $18,000, compared to $15,000 for their established counterparts. PW suggests that publishers have plenty of incentive to lure self-published authors.
Age plays part in this. The survey found that the overwhelming majority of authors under 55 earned their income by self-publishing. Even among authors 65 and older (which was the survey’s largest demographic), 41% reported earning the majority of income from self-publishing.
Some more takeaways:
● Traditionally published authors earned more in from nonbook writing-related income than book-related income ($5,000 vs. $7,400), while self-published authors earned more from book income.
● Romance authors had the highest median gross income from their books, out-earning mystery, thriller, and suspense writers by more than three-fold and literary fiction authors nine-fold. Graphic novelists ranked second.
● Black authors’ median book-related income was $800 vs. white authors’ $2,000. Participating white authors were 36% more likely to be traditionally published than Black authors (38% vs. 28%).
●The audiobook format is a dramatically underpublished growth opportunity: 55% of traditional and 64% of self-published authors have none of their books in audiobook format.
So, this brings me back to my question: Why do you do this?
True confession time: When I was starting out as a romance writer way back in 1980, all I wanted to make some money. I had read an article in a business magazine about all these housewives who were raking in the dough writing Harlequins.
{{Pause for laughter to subside}}}
I was working fulltime as a newspaper editor up in the management tree, but deep in my heart, I missed writing. Plus, how hard could it be to write a novel, right?
I wrote a partial manuscript called Her Turn To Dance, set in the New York ballet world. I shipped it off to all the New York publishers and sat back and waited for the offers to roll in. Seven months of crickets. Not even the dignity of a rejection form. I gave up and went back to doing employee evaluations. Then I got a letter from an editor at Ballantine Books. She apologized for taking so long, saying “due to the enormous volumn of admissions in the mail, I’m afraid we cannot keep up to date.” Then came this:
If Her Turn To Dance is still available, I would be very interested in reading the complete manuscript. Please send it to my attention here at Ballantine. Is this your first novel or have you published before?
Turns out that editor, Pamela Dean Strickler, was an ex-dancer. She found my partial manuscript in the slush pile. (Back then, you could send your stuff in without an agent). I still have her letter. They sent me a check for $1,250 (that’s me holding it below). A year later, retitled The Dancer, the book came out.
I got lucky. An editor liked my stuff. Believe me, sometimes that is all it takes. Pamela died about ten years ago and I wish I had made an effort to reconnect and thank her. Because she turned me into a pro. And I was very lucky to go on, switch to mysteries, reconnect with my sister as a co-author, and have a long and successful career in publishing. I made some pretty decent money. But you know what? The money became secondary.
I was writing because I loved doing it. I was writing because it was what I had to do. That’s why I did it.
May your year be peaceful. May your pockets be full. And may you do it for fun.
Kris, thanks for tackling the difficult topic of money. Terrific photo! These days, it’s all electronic transfer–no checks to pose with.
I joke about trying to earn enough from writing to feed a pet hamster but the poor thing starved to death. Kidding about the hamster, not about the income!
When I started freelancing in the 1990s, pay ranged from a penny to 10 cents/word. Really great magazines paid 25-50 cents. The most money I ever made for an article (in the AARP magazine, then called Modern Maturity) was a buck a word, $300 that I split with a coauthor. We were over the moon.
Never made it to the big leagues of Playboy, New Yorker, The Atlantic, Redbook,, etc.
Today, 30+ years later, the rate per word is exactly the same.
My pet peeve: some major writers organizations require an income threshold for self-published authors to join as active members: $5000 in book sales/year. Yet there is no income requirement if an author has a traditional contract with an approved publisher Many trad authors don’t earn that much w/o side hustles like speaking and coaching. Many never earn out their advance which can be less than $5000.
I understand the reasoning behind the policy–they want members who are serious professionals. But I’d sure like to see them reexamine the income level based on today’s reality.
Bottom line: “Not much money, oh, but honey
Ain’t we got fun?” Yup!
Re free lancing. Yeah, I did a lot of that after I quit newspaper work because I wasn’t making near enough from books alone. I did a lot of travel articles and airline magazines (remember thoses?) but man, it was hard work for not alot of payoff.
Re organizations that have income thresholds: I get why they do it. (I was on MWA’s board for a while). But it does bite. I do know the boards of these orgs are always reassessing the market in this regard.
I know which organizations you’re talking about. I’ve been irked that you have to send proof of your earnings. If they ever change the policy, I won’t be joining- I’m 10 years in on this writing career and they’re not worth the annual dues and discrimination to join as my learning curve is smaller these days. Sigh Thanks for the post.
And as many of us are probably examining our income/expenses for taxes, a timely article. I looked at gross income from one of my sales channels, and it was about half of last year. Then I looked again and realized I’d published only one book last year as opposed to two books the year before. Made sense.
I agree with Debbie that the double standard of membership requirements in writers organizations is unfair. MWA recently made some changes, and now it’s $1000 for traditionally published, and $2000 for indie authors. But it’s a one-time deal, so once you’re in, you’re in. As I recall, their justification for the discrepancy was that royalty rates were higher for indie published books.
What still irks is that indie published books aren’t eligible for Edgars. I judged them one year, and there were a lot of traditionally published books that were …. not very good.
Morning guys. We here in Tallahassee are in the path of this big storm front that will eventually threaten the NE tonight. Tornado watch and creepy winds this morning. So if I don’t answer comments, it means we’ve lost power or I’m hiding a closet. Hey, if my dog farts too loud in Tally, we lose power. Stay safe.
Hope you stay safe!
We’re fine now. Were under tornado watch for about an hour and we stuffed ourselves and the dogs in a bathtub until things calmed down. Yard flooded and tree limbs down but ok, Panama City area got hit bad but for once, we didn’t even lose power.
Thanks for pulling all this together Chris. Kind of depressing, but I doubt that any of us here write for the money. Most of us write because we can’t not write. So we better be having fun.
I’ve been blessed with decent advances as a trad-published author. But there is no way I can live on what I make writing. Which is a good thing that it never was about the money.
Same here. Had good run in trad publishing and then got a good ride with Thomas & Mercer for one book. T&M still occasionally does a special on the book even 6 yrs later.
Good morning, Kris. Thanks for a very interesting post, an important reality check, and the link to Publishers Weekly.
This may not be taken well by readers here, but I think it is healthy to have a writing related activity that creates income, allows for deep research into a certain area (which can help with creating new characters), and stimulates creativity that can flow over into our writing.
I hope that the storm heading for Tallahassee weakens. Stay safe!
I agree it’s very helpful to have an extracirricular nonbook activity for income and stimulation. I kept my gig as a dance critic going well after I left the newspaper biz even though I was writing books fulltime. Really helped me keep my balance. No pun inttended.
I thought a lot recently about why I’m writing. I’ve done reasonably well as an indie author, but nowhere near enough to live on. One of the challenges as a self-published author is what Terry pointed out: namely the more books you publish in a year, the more income tends to go up. One indie author I know makes well into six figures each year. She produces six to eight novels each year.
Many of us though can’t produce more than a couple of books a year. I’ve never been able to, and I’m “full-time” now. Mystery novels do take more time than my urban fantasy, but even when I was only writing fantasy, the most I could manage was two novels a year. I used to think it was because of my day job, but now I’m not so sure.
The upside is that I’ve personally seen the power of a lengthening series to increase income as a self-published author.
However, there are far easier ways to earn a living. I’m fortunate in that I have regular retirement income from my career at the library and my wife has the same from an even longer career at her school district, so mainly my self-publishing needs to continue to be in the black.
I write because I love writing, creating stories, going through the process of producing novels and stories to then share with readers. Being able to open the toy chest of my imagination and play, how can that be beat?
As others here have said often, esp James, the more “real estate” you have out there, the better you are going to do, indie and trad. That said, I cannot fathom trying to do 6-8 novels a year. Good grief…
The indie revolution has made it possible for more writers than ever to make some decent money. Of course, there are certain requirements, like knowing how to tell a solid story in an entertaining way (this we call the “craft”) and doing so in a fairly prolific manner. This may not lead to fabulous wealth, but as the old saying goes, “It ain’t hay.” Finally there is a way to turn your passion into pesos outside the walls of the Forbidden City. It takes work, but if you enjoy it (and you must), then type on.
Exactly. You have to produce quality consistently. But shoot, isn’t that the very definition of success in any profession?
Good morning, Kris. Hope you stay safe during the storm.
“making a living at the writing thing is what any sane person aims for.” I suppose that means you can number me among the crazies. Although I’d like to make good money at writing, I don’t need that income to put food on the table. But I have this crazy idea that I can write novels that are both entertaining and thought-provoking. Maybe even enlightening. That’s enough treasure for me. (Besides, who needs the responsibility of a huge fortune? It would just take time away from writing. 🙂 )
Yeah, that wasn’t well phrased on my part…it’s not exactly what I meant to say. I guess I wrote it because I keep remembering this one author whose panel I shared at a Miami Book Fair decades ago. She was a “literary” author and told the audience that she didn’t care if her books even sold. WTF? Okay, so it’s not the money. But writing is about emotionally and intellectually connecting with readers. All else is….trying to think of a nice way of saying sex with yourself. 🙂
“But writing is about emotionally and intellectually connecting with readers.” Yes. That’s what I was trying to say.
I had to chuckle at your post – because it’s tax time and I’m looking at my meager book sales earnings. At the same time, I’m reading JSB’s book on making a living as a writer. It made me realize the other writing I do is just as important as the novels I craft..
Thanks for the reminder that we do this for love, not for the love of money.
Yup. Tax time is always good for laughs, right?
Kris, thanks for the post and the work you put into it.
To be honest, though, I think these surveys are just north of useless, as are all self-selecting surveys on financial matters. I get the survey every year, and I promptly ignore it. My finances are nobody’s business, even if they’re laundered through some kind of anonymizer, and I have to believe that most people feel the same way. I figure that many who choose to participate do so with an agenda and they accordingly inflate or deflate their numbers.
A more reliable survey would involve agents and/or publishers showing the totals earned by their stable of authors that year divided by the number of authors published that year (backlist earnings included).
Then, as a frame of reference, get numbers from Amazon and similar indy outlets that show the totals earned by all indy authors divided by the number of indy authors who published that year.
I might be surprised, but my guess is there’d be a vast chasm between the two results.
Not surprised, Kris. I’d hate to break down my income into an hourly rate. I’ve had some moderate success, but nowhere near enough to live comfortably without my husband’s income. It’s hilarious how non-writers think all authors are loaded. If they only knew…
WOW. I’d never bothered to look up any kinds of earnings surveys for authors but reading this I’m glad it was never my goal for writing to supplant my day job. I’d always doubted the feasibility of making enough as an author to live off of and this data doesn’t even take into account the huge investment into insurance, etc.
Now if an author was making this amount of money say in 1900, they probably could’ve made it. LOL!
I addressed this general area on my blog a while ago:
https://jguentherauthor.wordpress.com/2018/02/22/the-awful-truth-about-writing-writers/
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