Writing as a Business

[zellandyne]

I am one of the lucky ones. One of the extremely lucky ones: I make my living as a writer.

It's not the way I dreamed of making a living as a writer*, but the fact of the matter is I get to write geeky stuff (superheroes! Star Trek!) on a daily basis, and take home a paycheck that allows me to pay a modest rent, service my debt (from school and

Comments

[dixiemouse]

Was actually speaking w/ someone this weekend that was finishing his first book... his contract was for 5%... and his lawyer said it was "standard"... (and it was with one of the major publishers)... and it's supposed to be hard cover @ $30 or $40...

Little more for your brain nibbles :)

[particle_mann]

Which begs the question though...what about the Wil Wheaton model of self publishing? Much like in the music world, where relentless touring, making your own cds, and getting most of your album and merch sales at shows seems to make so much more financial sense, how viable is self publishing vs. the traditional model you describe, which quite frankly seems pretty crappy for the writer :)

[zellandyne]

Actually, you're missing out on a lot of pertinent information there. Here's an excellent post by Catheryne Valente that explains why self publishing will not work for the vast majority of writers:

http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/563086.html

And here is John Scalzi's take on the need for publishers. (Note, he is buddies with Wil Wheaton):

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/03/why-in-fact-publishing-will-not-go-away-anytime-soon-a-deeply-slanted-play-in-three-acts/

Self publishing certainly can work, but the odds there are even worse than they are in professional publishing.

[nihilistic_kid]

It can certainly work...if you're a TV star.

For most anyone else, take the numbers above and apply minus signs to them. Instead of receiving $5000, you have to spend $5000, etc.

[linley]

I don't know if there is such a thing as an average print run--I think it varies greatly depending on genre, type of publisher, etc. I know of a recent literary novel with a first hardback printing of 20,000 and second hardback printing of 5,000 (no paperback printing yet). But I also know that those are not typical numbers for literary novels.

You can sometimes figure out a baseline print run from the advance because publishers generally will not offer writers advances that they do not think they can earn out-- it doesn't make good business sense to do otherwise. (Hardback + paperback complicates this, of course.) However, some ridiculous percentage of books never earn out their advances, and those writers never see more than the initial advance.

I think it's also important to mention that writers get royalty checks twice a year, and many publishers hang on to the money as long as they can to collect as much interest as possible. Thus, a writer could easily see royalties from July-Dec. '09 in April '10.