I'm A Writer - I'm Going To Be Rich!

One of the common questions seen in writers’ groups on social media is “How much do authors earn?”
 
The question comes in a variety of forms, some trying to disguise the fact that the person asking the question is only interested in making a quick buck and thinks that being an author may be the way. But some people genuinely see being an author as being the road to making a decent living.
 
Of course, for some authors, it is a way of making a decent living. Indeed, some authors become very rich through their writing.
 
But for Joe (or Josephine) Average, the average author, is it a realistic way to make a living?
 
We would say it probably isn’t. I’m afraid we have the data to back that up as there has been a lot of research into this over the years.

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Let’s start with some basic facts.
 
70% of all the authors  who publish or are published, never sell more than 100 copies of their books.
 
Some of that is to do with marketing, of course. If no one knows about the book they can’t buy it.
 
Some of it is because the books are about subjects that don’t have a wide audience appeal. They are either on very niche subjects or they are memoirs about lives that just aren’t that fascinating, but the author thought they were.
 
Finally, they just aren’t very good books, certainly not as good as the author thought they were, and can’t garner enough good reviews to encourage people to buy them.
 
Of the remaining 30% of books published, 70% of those won’t sell more than 1,000 copies. That’s about 21% of the total number of books published (so we’re now up to 91% of the published total).
 
Again, the reasons are varied, and marketing once again takes centre stage, but the fact that the book has sold between 100 and 999 copies suggests it isn’t a bad book, per se.
 
But that leaves just 9% of books published selling more than 1000 copies.
 
However, you need to sell about 30,000 copies to make a living wage. That is to say, a wage good enough not to have to do any other work. Even then that will depend on other factors in your life such as the size of your mortgage (or amount of rent you pay), the size of your family and your lifestyle.
 
One person’s living wage is another person’s poverty – or wealth.
 
Less than 1% of authors make what we might regard as “decent” money and only 0.1% ever become rich from their writing.
 
And even then, most of their wealth doesn’t come from their books, it comes from the TV and film rights for their books.
 
So, if you haven’t written the first word of your novel, how do you know if you are going to be in the 99% or the 1%?
 
You don’t.

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If you get as far as completing a good draft you start to get some indication of your likely success from the reaction to your work from agents, though it takes some time to gather enough data.
 
One rejection doesn’t mean much. It just means that the agent may be too busy or doesn’t really like your genre, or just didn’t get your “message”.
 
Ten rejections should start the author thinking a bit, but it still isn’t conclusive evidence. According to publishing legend, J K Rowling received at least 10 rejections for her first Harry Potter book.
 
But once you get to around 20 rejections the message should be becoming clear.
 
Even then, the message only applies to that book. Some authors query three or four books before they get one accepted by an agent. What made that book different from the first three? The author will probably say there was nothing different about it. But the agent thought it was different enough to take a chance on it, so there must have been something.

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But even then the story isn’t finished, because there is a growing body of self-published authors that are making 6 digit and even 7 digit royalties.
 
So, the agents obviously don’t know everything when it comes to what makes a best-seller.
 
But what makes those 6 digit self-published authors different isn’t necessarily their writing. I have read some of their books. They are OK, but I wouldn’t call them remarkable. In fact, some could be described as mediocre – but they still sell.
 
What is different is that their authors invest a lot of time, effort and (probably) money into marketing. They have become expert at it, which is how they are able to sell so many books.
 
As a small publisher, we have seen this for ourselves. When we market a book, we sell copies. When we stop marketing it, sales dry up very quickly.
 
Authors think that what they are paying us for is editing, cover design, proof reading, formatting etc. Sure, we do those things, but the authors could pay anyone to do those things for them.
 
No, what we are really being paid for, and the way we make our money, is book marketing. Yes, we do the other stuff, but until the book sells we don’t make a penny and neither does the author. Marketing pays for everything.
 
And, while trad publishers may tell you otherwise, it is in the marketing of books that they also make their money. Everything else they do costs them money. Editors, cover designers, proof readers and the rest of the publishing team, all have to be paid before the books have sold a single copy.
 
So, if you want to make money out of being an author, you must first learn how to be a marketer. Once you know how to do that, then start writing your book.
 
Doing it the other way around only leads to disappointment, because it takes longer to learn to be a successful marketer than it does to write a book.

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And if you do that, you might just make a decent living out of writing.
 
Even if you are certain your book is going to find an agent and be trad published, you can’t be certain that will happen. So if/when the horrible truth hits you, it is already too late.
 
It’s fine to have a dream that one day your writing may make you rich but keep yourself grounded with the knowledge that it may not happen. And even if it does happen, it may take some time before it does.
 
To quote Kipling “If you can dream and not make dreams your master;”
 
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