My experience writing and selling a short story • Hacker News Board

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#21

Post by eloff » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

superamit wrote: post #18

eloff wrote: post #13

My brother writes Sci Fi for a living. He's self taught and self published. He does well, he's sold over a million books. What many people don't know is he suffered from severe tendonitis that really narrowed his career options. He started writing because he could write using voice recognition software. Now he writes with a keyboard, as the pain is more manageable. I'm extremely proud of him for how well he's been ab…

30+ novels! Very impressive. How long did it take him to get to 1 million copies sold, and was there anything he did along the way that had an outsized impact on his success?

He's been writing for about 12 years, and he crossed the million threshold at least two years ago - so about a decade.

I'm not sure about the answer to the second question, I'll ask him over a beer next time we get together. I would say that an important factor was investing in professional cover art, editing, etc. He also more or less timed the rise of Kindle books, quite by accident, and I think that also helped his career.

But there's no substitute for caring about his work and putting in the time, which he definitely does.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#22

Post by gizajob » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

It's a pretty terrible, hackneyed, non-story, now I've read it. Flag me down all you like. Seems like the author is more interested in the stats about writing than the actual writing.

Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the second. The author seems to think writing is hard and slow. It is slow, but after the first decade or two it gets quicker when the inspiration comes.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#23

Post by superamit » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #19

Nice! Purchased a copy. For those looking you need to add author name - doesn't show up with just title on amazon Haven't seen this before: >this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Wow, thanks! TBH I didn't even know Tor was selling it as a Kindle single for 99 cents.

And DRM-free! Cool. Feel free to pirate, I guess.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#24

Post by dageshi » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #2

writing has to be among the worst ways to make money, sorry to say you need top .5% talent and work ethic to maybe earn a lower-middle class salary A labor of love, as it's said

There are more options than the past depending on genre niche and whether you're trying to entertain or write "literary works".

For various genres of the fantasy genre there's a fairly well trodden road nowadays of going from royalroad.com (with patreon) to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited.

royalroad.com lets people build massive followings and then translate them into patreon and other monetisation.

The audiences in the litrpg space right now are voracious and are fairly forgiving of typo's/grammar so long as they enjoy the story.

I'm not sure the same could've been said 10 or even 5 years ago. But again it's fairly genre specific.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#25

Post by dqpb » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #12

It's worth noting that Tor's pay for authors is in the absolute top tier. I've had a short story published in a smaller publication, and they paid me $50 total - $25 for the first six months exclusivity, then $25 again for inclusion in an anthology. That is more typical for a starting out author. OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!

I don't understand why you would sell for that amount.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#26

Post by diob » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #2

writing has to be among the worst ways to make money, sorry to say you need top .5% talent and work ethic to maybe earn a lower-middle class salary A labor of love, as it's said

Yeah, I remember a study they did with music where they separated groups and in each group different bands would come to dominate based on luck (whoever got momentum first). Wish I could find it, it was quite a time ago.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#27

Post by nibbleshifter » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:05 PM UTC

sammalloy wrote: post #8

paulpauper wrote: post #2

writing has to be among the worst ways to make money, sorry to say you need top .5% talent and work ethic to maybe earn a lower-middle class salary A labor of love, as it's said

> writing has to be among the worst ways to make money It’s being a musician, actually. Most writers have the skills to maintain good side gigs of some kind or another. Musicians have to dedicate more of their time to musicianship, and often end up on the lower side of the pay scale. Sure, there will be a few with a profitable clientele paying for private lessons and tutoring, but that’s far more rare.

Most of the musicians I know make the bulk of their music-related income from private tutoring, its what funds the rest of it. They usually also will have a day job of some sort.

Recording and producing music, making music videos, etc is a massive cost center that may or may not break even. Usually not.

Playing live gigs is usually a money loser for most - venues often have extremely unfavourable terms (especially when starting out - a lot of places are pay to play, where you have to market and sell the tickets and at best get to keep what's left over after venue hire is covered).

The real money is basically in teaching the offspring of upper middle class people how to play an instrument.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#28

Post by keyle » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #12

It's worth noting that Tor's pay for authors is in the absolute top tier. I've had a short story published in a smaller publication, and they paid me $50 total - $25 for the first six months exclusivity, then $25 again for inclusion in an anthology. That is more typical for a starting out author. OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!

These figures are interesting for me. One day of contracting dwarfs that.

You'd have to be absolutely passionate and have another income to do this, which is a shame. I think every craft should have its place. Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays.

I hope you get a breakthrough though; because if you keep doing this, you're clearly passionate about your craft!

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#29

Post by nibbleshifter » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #11

paulpauper wrote: post #2

writing has to be among the worst ways to make money, sorry to say you need top .5% talent and work ethic to maybe earn a lower-middle class salary A labor of love, as it's said

Writing is a solid way to make money in specific genres, however, especially if one is self-published. A business-saavy writer can make a good amount of money writing romance (which makes more money than most other genres combined) or self-help.

A former manager of mine had a whole side gig writing direct-to-kindle romance and erotica for quite a while. Not bad money in it either.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#30

Post by hamiltonians » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #12

It's worth noting that Tor's pay for authors is in the absolute top tier. I've had a short story published in a smaller publication, and they paid me $50 total - $25 for the first six months exclusivity, then $25 again for inclusion in an anthology. That is more typical for a starting out author. OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!

you mean thousands of dollars?