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Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

theintrinsicperspective.com

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Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#11

Post by MisterBastahrd »

mmcdermott wrote: post #9
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #6

Title does not follow through with article. The author defines "making a living" as making 4x the median salary, and further ONLY considers authors of books. There are MANY ways to make an actual living wage off of writing that have nothing to do with book authorship. Blogs, newsletters, journalism, opinion columns, and screenwriting, for example.

It also assumes that big hits are the only ways for an author to make a living. I remember a blog where a fantasy author ( https://monsterhunternation.com/2022/02/08/analyzing-my-roya... ) advocated the opposite - of focusing on series and creating a range of small royalty streams that pay the bills. The mindset is entirely different as it is much closer to treating the author's oeuvre as a portfolio of assets rather…

Yeah, it also fails to acknowledge that self-publishing is a thing and you can make a nice career writing straight-to-epub books and print on demand books. Amazon allows people to bypass traditional publishers.

Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#12

Post by pcthrowaway »

Making a living from book sales alone, by writing books is as rare as a billionaire.

Still. Quite sad to think about.

Of course, many writers use writing as part of a greater hustle, and there are of course also movie deals and other adaptations.

And this excludes journalism, tabloids, copywriting, technical writing, writing for hire, short-form writing, screenwriting, playwriting, and many others.

In fact, I think writers focusing exclusively on books is quite rare. I expect there are many more people making a living through writing alone than there are billionaires.

Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#13

Post by j0hnyl »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #10

The assumption of one book per five years isn't reasonable for a full-time writer making their living off of writing. Most full-time authors that I know of write more like a book per year. Averaging more than one per year isn't uncommon. They also have a large back catalog of books that each trickle in some royalties to supplement what they're making off of new books.

I don't know many people who make a living a writing, but the ones that I do know rarely make a living from writing books.

Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#15

Post by JohnFen »

mmcdermott wrote: post #9
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #6

Title does not follow through with article. The author defines "making a living" as making 4x the median salary, and further ONLY considers authors of books. There are MANY ways to make an actual living wage off of writing that have nothing to do with book authorship. Blogs, newsletters, journalism, opinion columns, and screenwriting, for example.

It also assumes that big hits are the only ways for an author to make a living. I remember a blog where a fantasy author ( https://monsterhunternation.com/2022/02/08/analyzing-my-roya... ) advocated the opposite - of focusing on series and creating a range of small royalty streams that pay the bills. The mindset is entirely different as it is much closer to treating the author's oeuvre as a portfolio of assets rather…

> focusing on series and creating a range of small royalty streams that pay the bills.

This is a variation on some valuable business guidance I got a long time ago: it's better to get one nickle each from 100 sources than to get 100 nickles from one source. It spreads risk (losing 1 out of 100 nickle sources won't break you) and it also prevents any source from having too much control over you.

Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#16

Post by vidarh »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #10

The assumption of one book per five years isn't reasonable for a full-time writer making their living off of writing. Most full-time authors that I know of write more like a book per year. Averaging more than one per year isn't uncommon. They also have a large back catalog of books that each trickle in some royalties to supplement what they're making off of new books.

I agree with that - those who live of writing who wrote few books are likely the highest sellers.

But that said, in the UK the average full time writer earns less than minimum wage from their writing (but have higher than average household income)

Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#17

Post by vidarh »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #11
mmcdermott wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also assumes that big hits are the only ways for an author to make a living. I remember a blog where a fantasy author ( https://monsterhunternation.com/2022/02/08/analyzing-my-roya... ) advocated the opposite - of focusing on series and creating a range of small royalty streams that pay the bills. The mindset is entirely different as it is much closer to treating the author's oeuvre as a portfolio of assets rather…

Yeah, it also fails to acknowledge that self-publishing is a thing and you can make a nice career writing straight-to-epub books and print on demand books. Amazon allows people to bypass traditional publishers.

It's exceedingly rare to do well from self publishing too.

Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#18

Post by MisterBastahrd »

vidarh wrote: post #17
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it also fails to acknowledge that self-publishing is a thing and you can make a nice career writing straight-to-epub books and print on demand books. Amazon allows people to bypass traditional publishers.

It's exceedingly rare to do well from self publishing too.

It's not 500 out of 300M rare. I have a co-worker who could support himself entirely on sales from a children's book he self-published.

Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#19

Post by sandspar »

Log_out_ wrote: post #8

Oversupply jobmarkets are brutal and exploitive towards the naive and try to keep that naivete going to guarantee an Oversupply of exploitable workers sticking around in a steady stream. Up next an interview with Scarlett Weinstiensson. Writing, music, game design, acting, fashion. All the nice things attracting all the bad people to profit from humanity needing all the nice things to make life bearable.

Another way to put it is that the most gentle among us are attracted to industries run by the most brutal among us.

Re: Making a living by writing is as rare as being a billionaire

#20

Post by daymanstep »

odyssey7 wrote: post #4

The claim of the title turns out to be significantly narrower when you get into the text. Still, it offers some good points. The following is perhaps what’s most relevant to Hacker News. > In this, as Elle has pointed out before, the economics of publishing are a lot like venture capital investment: most books, the overwhelming majority, don’t sell. Companies make many mini-bets. Very occasionally, a bet in their por…

Is this true for technical books? I can't imagine that a book like Practical Malware Analysis or The Rootkit Arsenal would ever be "wildly popular".

If publishers like O'Reilly were operating on this model then why would they ever publish any books on any niche subject? Surely they would only ever publish books targeted to a mass audience.

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