Tuesday, January 16, 2018

The Professional Writer Makes Money


Well, that’s the idea, isn’t it? We write these tomes, and we would like to be paid a working wage. In fact, many of us don’t consider ourselves “professional writers” until we’ve pulled down some royalties.

But the odds of making a living from writing are slim. And there is no one to petition to raise our minimum wage. Marketplace purchases decide your royalties.

Here are some facts I gathered from online research of surveys and polls about writers’ incomes.

One in ten authors can make a living from their writing without a supporting, secondary job.

The typical writer earns less than minimum wage.

17% of authors earn $0 a year despite 98% of them having something recently published.

5% of authors earn 42.3% of all writing income. That’s 95% of us sharing the remainder. Talk about the haves and the have nots.

Women writers earn 80% of what male writers earn.

77% of indie authors made $1000 a year.

1.3% of traditionally published authors earned $100,000 a year. But only 0.07% of indie published authors earned that amount.

Oh, there are more of these discouraging stats, but why go on. Your writing is almost certainly not going to support you. If it does, well, bully for you. For the rest of us, we’d better have a back-up plan.

These stats are the reason that fewer presses give advances to new authors. Most new authors don’t earn out the advance in future royalties. The publishers gave more generously in the past because the expectation of future books was that over time the money for the advance on the first book would be recovered by the publisher.

So what do writers turn to for earning a living wage while waiting to get into the 1.3% who do succeed financially?

The majority of writers I know have a job unrelated to writing. But the mortgage gets paid and the kids have milk to drink. In their “spare time” they crank out their books and indie or traditionally publish them. The dribbling royalties justify their identity as professional writer. I tell folks rude enough to ask what I earn that my royalties are in the hundreds not the tens of thousands.

A very large number of my professional writing friends supplement royalties by providing editing services for other writers. These are professionals who are using their talents with others’ words. That service is almost certainly going to return more than royalties. So some authors are able to quit their day jobs and focus on their own writing and ancillary writing, keeping, thus, to the same field.

A smaller number of professional writers I know of supplement royalties by offering other services and/or teaching on-line and in-person classes. I’m hoping to be in the latter category.

I was an educator for thirty-nine years. Even as an administrator, I taught whenever I had the opportunity. It’s in my blood. Therefore, teaching writing classes, for me, is not just about being a professional writer who is paid for her expertise (if not her writing), but it gives me pleasure to be part of another’s understanding of complex materials.

I have approached Writer University with a couple of ideas. Writer University is not just any on-line writing classes group. It began in 2005 when Mary Buckham and Laurie Schnebley Campbell connected over their desire to create quality, affordable on-line classes for writers. They have expanded course offerings and instructors over the years, but the quality remains at the same high level they always envisioned.

The classes are in the categories of business/craft classes, basics, master classes, super classes, and private classes. The topics range from plotting to writing synopses to working on the first draft to so much more. The classes are two- or four-week experiences. And the price is right! Most classes are as low as $35 for four weeks of instruction and targeted homework. These are some of the best classes I have ever taken for any price.

I would love to teach classes for this group. So, wish me luck as I plan and try out a course or two. I’ll be looking for a few hardy folks who want to take the class to help me refine it before making it a general offering. Are you one of them?

Please spread the word about this post. Thanks so much!

Facebook: Can you earn a living from royalties as an author? Well, maybe, but it’s not likely. So how do writers make money? http://bit.ly/2EKYWZI

Twitter: #Writers, tired of trying to live off paltry royalties? There are other ways to use your writing expertise and get paid for it. http://bit.ly/2EKYWZI

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