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

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#91

Post by robotresearcher » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 12:59 AM UTC

oauch wrote: post #10

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

I'd be curious if short fiction writing was more lucrative several decades ago when literary magazines were a larger force. Was it more possible to survive as an independent writer before, or have the economics of writing always been so terrible?

"[Arthur Conan Doyle's] first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was written in three weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co on 20 November 1886, which gave Doyle £25 (equivalent to £2,900 in 2019) in exchange for all rights to the story."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle#Literary_ca...

This very good story sold for about 3X the OP's story, at a time when print was the dominant medium.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#92

Post by 0xMatt » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:00 AM UTC

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#93

Post by ghaff » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:09 AM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #86

ghaff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have many different reasons for writing. I've actually had this discussion with authors and you seem to be suggesting that people shouldn't be allowed to accept token payments for work if they aren't dependent on it directly as a full-time occupation. Are you going to ban bloggers etc. in general because they dilute the market for writing at sustainable professional rates? Amateurs (or pros using an activity l…

There is no suggestion of compulsion in my comment. I’m asking that people stop hurting their fellow authors by participating in a race to the bottom, simply because they’re flattered that a for-profit corporation is willing to take their product for essentially no compensation. This has nothing to do with contributing to open-source software, working for nonprofits for a social good, etc. I do all those things. But…

My career has benefitted in many ways from writing even if not directly in terms if money. It’s not really my issue that I’m competing with others who want to directly monetize.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#94

Post by kylebenzle » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:09 AM UTC

0xMatt wrote: post #92

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#95

Post by cableshaft » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:13 AM UTC

corrral wrote: post #58

cableshaft wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is heading down that path right now. There are people she collabs with that made $200k in their first year of writing romance novels (but they wrote like, six books in a year. You need to churn them out quick to make that much money, usually in series of books, not one-offs). My wife is in marketing for her day job and has been using that knowledge to help target and generate interest in her books, and it see…

> (but they wrote like, six books in a year. You need to churn them out quick to make that much money, usually in series of books, not one-offs). It helps that romance novels tend to be way on the short side. Self-published can be even shorter than the traditionally published stuff—a lot of those authors seem to get away with charging $4+ for maybe 70 pages, for each entry in their tens-of-books-long series. Much cle…

Well, my wife's first book is 90k words, so, right around the size of those thrillers (it almost was going to be 120k+ words, but it started getting too tight to the time she had booked for an editor for her liking).

But you're still not wrong, in general (although 70 pages might be a bit on the low side, on average). At least her next project is going to be a novella for an anthology at around 30k words. But her next novel will probably be similar to her first. She's going to try to release 3-4 her first year, and a couple novellas, while working a full time job. Of course because of that she's not doing too much besides work, write, market, stress, and sleep right now.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#96

Post by pacaro » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:16 AM 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.

Tor books are all DRM free, and have been for a while. It's nice to be able to archive purchases. Also when using an ereader where artwork isn't always very accessible you can just open the zip file and look at it with a better image viewer. A particular bonus when artwork is really good, or if printing out a map will make reading more enjoyable etc

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#97

Post by eloff » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

jotato wrote: post #69

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…

I want to read one of his books. What is your recommendation for a book lover (although a casual sci-fi reader at best)

I just finished Planet B which I quite enjoyed and I think is very approachable for casual Sci Fi readers.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#98

Post by egypturnash » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:23 AM 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.

Tor’s been selling their stuff DRM-free for about as long as ebooks have existed.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#99

Post by Barrera » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:25 AM UTC

> I spent 22 hours, 18 minutes, and 47 seconds writing and editing “India World” across 42 sessions in Google Docs. (Not including hours more spent editing on paper, revising the story at workshops, or reading critiques.)

Given the quality of the work, I suspect that 2x-5x that many hours were spent on developing and revising the story (the parenthetical part). So let's call it 66 hours total.

Later:

> 8/27/2020 - RUOXI FROM TOR.COM EMAILED TO BUY THE STORY! They offered $1422.80 for exclusive digital, audio, and ebook rights for one year, non-exclusive afterward. Likely publication: early 2021. I said yes!

So, ballpark $20/hr. Some commenters have noted the low pay for this kind of work. How it's a labor of love rather than a living. And Tor apparently pays top dollar. On top of the fee, there's a profit sharing program, which starts to sound pretty good. But again, this looks to be the ceiling.

What's more interesting are the non-financial terms. The author can sell the work to others after one year. Depending on whether the author retains copyright (seems to be implied), this could be a pretty interesting way to go. I'm thinking about things like expansion into a novel, movie or other derivative works, for example. The acceptance letter doesn't quite make it clear how this works. How does it work?

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#100

Post by anonwriter42 » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 1:26 AM 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.

The side gig used by many "writers" is to establish yourself as one of many mentors that offers guidance for get rich quick schemes such as the blacklist.

In reality, for most writing is a fading interest. It's a skill that anyone can really pick up if they wanted to but doing so is easy to learn and hard to master. You can go long periods of time writing and never improve.

Due to how the system as whole is designed most writers never improve. It's just how it works in the end because of the lack of a coherent structure or guidance system. Only if you belong to pre-established writing groups will you even really have a chance at learning it.

Sure there are several references openly available online, but all it can teach you is syntax. What you need to be a good writer is experience, training and mentoring which most people will never gain the opportunity of having. And even to those that do, it's a lifelong endeavor and one that requires complex knowledge in a variety of fields. It's one that most that pick it up will never be able to comprehend themselves or when they do, it's too late and trying to do so is fundamentally impossible for them due to their situation.