Money Post, Year 2

[jimhines]

Last year, several folks wrote about how much they made as a working writer. I joined that conversation, mostly because I felt it was an important reality check. At the time I fully intended to continue doing so in 2009 and beyond, because I think the more information we share as writers, the better prepared we are for this crazy career

Comments

[ex_paulskem]

Good information, not ego-stroking.

Those foreign sales sure were a little sumptin'sumptin'. :-)

[jimhines]

Heck yeah. JABberwocky is probably one of the best in the business for foreign sales. I feel incredibly lucky to have ended up with them.

[margaret_y]

Jim, I believe I said this last year, and I'll say it again. You are my hero. This kind of post is extremely brave. In our culture, we are so weird talking about money. Thank you for this.

[jimhines]

Thanks. I'm glad it's helpful!

[mmuenzler]

[jimhines]

I have a high deduction at work, which should help. And my wife going back to school should give us some deductions for tuition. But yeah, it's still gonna sting.

I'm waiting to see what happens when my wife finishes grad school. If she's able to find a job that's stable and pays well enough, I'll be ditching the cubicle so fast my shadow will be running to catch up :-)

[mmuenzler]

[cedunkley]

Thanks for sharing this. As an aspiring writer this is one of those areas where there really isn't a lot of information available beyond theory. And since it isn't polite to ask someone what they made having authors step up and share like this is quite helpful.

[jimhines]

You're welcome! It actually amuses me sometimes. When I talk to most writing groups, it's the one thing that never comes up. But if I go and talk to a group of kids?

"Hey, does this mean you're rich?"
"How much do you get paid for that book?"

And so on :-)

[bondo_ba]

My vote is that it's extremely helpful. I think it's great that some writers are as open aboout the financial side as they are about the creative side.

Hope you make even more money this coming year.

[jimhines]

I know it helped me a lot to hear about the business side of things. Tobias Buckell's first novel advance survey was probably the first resource I ever saw along those lines. (It's at his web site if you haven't seen it.)