I'm an author. I write books of science projects you can perform on your loved ones. For each of my four books, I got paid a decent advance. One of the books has been quite successful and has earned back its advance, so I now get royalty checks. An audiobook deal and half a dozen foreign-rights deals have sweetened the pot. It's not what I would call a passive income method, however, because a lot of work goes into i…
Congrats on earning out your advance! What’s the work that goes into one of your books years after publication? Or, since you mentioned your advance, I assume you have traditionally published. In that case I thought your publisher would handle all the operational issues, eg marketing. Or do you mean the work goes not into the older books but into drafting and editing the newer ones?
A small number of top-tier authors -- those whose books are virtually guaranteed to be bestsellers from day 1 -- tend to have marketing and publicity teams that will continue to be active well after publication.
But for midlist authors like myself, the publisher will do a marketing/publicity push around your publication date, but after a few months, it tends to die out. Which is not to say that they won't seize a good opportunity if it presents itself. But generally it's the author who's setting up their events after that point and figuring out other creative ways to spread awareness of their book, e.g. writing regular blog posts to maintain their brand.