My experience writing and selling a short story
superamit.substack.com
My experience writing and selling a short story
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Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#2writing 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
Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#3writing 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
And I'd say that was a pretty good result overall.
For what may be more relatable to many here, publishing a technical (or tech-adjacent, i.e. more popular industry takes of various kinds) book may be career-enhancing, even significantly so, in various ways. But you still will likely just make a few $K in direct moneys.I did a book about open source history/business models/etc. and it's been good--even was asked to do a second edition/done book signings at event/etc.--but still only made single-digit thousands of dollars directly.
Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#4writing 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 would say you have to be in the top 0.5% to make minimum wage as a fiction writer.
If you want to write listicles, sure you don't need as much talent and you can make above minimum wage.
Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#5writing 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
And I'd say that was a pretty good result overall. For what may be more relatable to many here, publishing a technical (or tech-adjacent, i.e. more popular industry takes of various kinds) book may be career-enhancing, even significantly so, in various ways. But you still will likely just make a few $K in direct moneys.I did a book about open source history/business models/etc. and it's been good--even was asked to d…
Appreciate that you probably didn't want to be accused of shameless promotion but I'm genuinely interested; what is the name of your book?
Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#6writing 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
Like all the "jobs" that should be done by people who don't need money to sustain themselves so kids of rich parents or self made people after they hit it big.
But it goes with all content creators - sports - academia, getting PHD or Professor title.
Funny thing is that a lot of people try to become boxers or writers, football players as it seems easy to "make it" but I don't know if there is "car sports" rags to riches stories, to do car sports one has to be quite on the rich side anyway.
But still to go path of Mike Tyson you still have to be .5% talent and work ethic and for quite some time getting scraps as payments.
Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I'd say that was a pretty good result overall. For what may be more relatable to many here, publishing a technical (or tech-adjacent, i.e. more popular industry takes of various kinds) book may be career-enhancing, even significantly so, in various ways. But you still will likely just make a few $K in direct moneys.I did a book about open source history/business models/etc. and it's been good--even was asked to d…
Appreciate that you probably didn't want to be accused of shameless promotion but I'm genuinely interested; what is the name of your book?
How Open Source Ate Software (from Apress)--think it's on Safari.
I've done book signings at Linux Foundation events and it's led to me doing a number of internal projects that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#8writing 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.
Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#9This is an excellent view on how writing speculative fiction actually works. Amit's publication to Tor should be lauded as a serious achievement in his career and not something that an average person could reasonably expect to achieve/plan for. Congratulations to him.
Please consider reading the work itself here: https://www.tor.com/2022/06/01/india-world-amit-gupta/
Re: My experience writing and selling a short story
#10writing 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?