There was a lot of talk in the publishing world last week about people leaving low paying publishing jobs. That was about editors, not authors, so I’m not really qualified to talk about it beyond waving my hands and shouting that ‘this is not good!’ Yet here I am.

My posts about the publishing business are by far my most popular posts, so I thought I’d talk about the subject from a point of view that I do know. Because it’s not just editors. Agents face the same conundrum. So do writers. And I can talk to it from the perspective of a traditionally published writer.

I debated whether to do this post, because I’m going to share some real information here that we, as authors, generally keep private. I’m a successful author with four books published and two more on the way and I made $32000 last year after agent fees (I give you the after agent number because that’s what comes on my 1099, and I’m too lazy to figure out the math on what the publisher actually paid. But if you’re interested, my agent gets 15%, so it’s whatever 32K is 85% of. (Side note — you can also figure out what my agent made, and it’s…not a lot.)

I called myself successful. So how do I define that? Because it’s one of those nebulous things, right? Well, my first three books earned out their advances. My first novel has sold over 50,000 copies (which doesn’t sound like much, but it is.) And I recently signed a contract to write my sixth book. What percentage of traditionally published authors get to write their sixth book? I don’t know, but it’s not high. Almost certainly it’s fewer than you think.

So why doesn’t everybody share that number? Well, it’s embarrassing, right? A lot of authors don’t want to admit how little they make. There are a few reasons for that, and at least one of them is practical. We want to seem like we’re doing well so that readers believe it and want to be part of it. Or, alternately, they make significantly more than that and they don’t want to seem like they’re bragging.

So why am I sharing it when it’s almost an industry rule that we don’t.

Three reasons.

1. Because I’m in a position where I can. I do have two more books coming out, and as I’ll detail below, I can afford to take risk. I have other income. So if this blows back on me, I’ll survive. Not everyone is in that place, so I’ll speak so they don’t have to.
   
2. As it turns out, $32,000 is the perfect number to share. It’s neither too high nor too low. It’s more than what most traditionally published authors make. I don’t know the percentages, but I’d guess that it puts me in the top 20%? Maybe top 10%? Yeah. You read that right. And at the same time, nobody is going to look at 32K and think ‘Wow, that’s the dream right there. This guy is just bragging.’
   
3. And I can’t stress this enough: I’m 53 years old and I’ve developed a really healthy perspective when it comes to not giving a shit what people think about me.

And I’m sharing it for a reason. Perspective. To know where I’m coming from, you have to know where I’m coming from. If that makes sense. My perspective is different from an author making six figures, and it’s different from an author who made four figures.

The thing that all of us have in common is that in most cases, we got into the ‘business’ because it was something we loved. Sure, there are probably a few people who specifically started writing to make money. But I’d bet that most of them, when they learned the reality, fled pretty quickly. So I think it’s safe to say that most authors started writing because they love it. Or at least like it.

But at some point, for pro authors, they decided to monetize that love, either by design or by accident, as a side hustle or with a thought toward doing it full time. And when they did that, at some point (or, more likely, points) they had to make decisions between the two. And that’s where the problems start. Because an industry predicated on underpaying people and exploiting their love for the business is flawed from the start.

From a pure capitalist perspective, it’s great. After all, a business should endeavor to pay as little as it can to deliver its product to consumers, so paying in love really helps the bottom line (although this begs the question of why some publishers don’t do simple, non-expensive things to make their authors feel more loved — but that’s a different post for a different day.)

So let me just get to it. I’m going to talk about the concept of love vs. money in general, and specifically how it has applied to me. I will then speculate on how it might affect others differently, though for that part, I’m just making an educated guess based on things I hear from other authors.

As I do this, I want to be clear that I’m not taking shots at anybody. Everyone has a different situation, and everybody gets to make their own decisions. Regardless of what society or the industry says, there’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to prioritizing art or money. I mean, I think we can all agree that ideally, we’d do both. We’d write exactly what we want and somebody would pay us lots of money for it.

My point here is this: we all make decisions on what projects to do or not do. Whether to keep writing or leave the business. And those decisions evolve as we continue and with where we are in our lives. We are all balancing some amount of satisfaction (joy/love/happiness — fill in your own word) with some amount of financial compensation. It’s that way in every job, probably. People are willing to do x to earn y. But I think it’s a bit different in a creative industry because of the premium that a lot of people put on doing what they’re passionate about. Which is where things get complicated. A lot of writers are willing to take less money than they could make working elsewhere, or to do it part time while working at something that actually pays the bills, because it’s something that they love.

Sure. A lot of people do it with the hopes that they’ll be the one. Certainly the money for the top tenth of one percent is great. But I do think most of us are also realistic about it. At least after a while.

I think writers as a group are probably on a bell curve. On the extremes, you have a few people who are just going to write what they love with no thought to whether or not they can get paid for it (and when I say a few, I’m talking about those who are actually trying to sell things, not those who write just for fun.) And on the other extreme, you’ve probably got a few people who are going to write exactly what they think will pay them the most, regardless of whether they like it or not.

But most of us are probably somewhere in between. For me, as I decide on what project to work on next, it’s the overlap in the Venn diagram of ‘Things I want to write’ and ‘Things someone will pay me to write.’

There are things that I’d like to write that I probably couldn’t sell on spec. I’d have to write some piece of them ahead of time — I don’t know how much, because I haven’t seriously considered it at this point in my life — but probably 50K words or so. But I’d be doing that with no guarantee. More important for me is the fact that I’m not a particularly fast writer. So not only would I be writing and revising those words with no guarantee that I could sell them, I’d also be taking time away from projects that I definitely could sell. Maybe someday I’ll be at that point. Today is not that day.

On the other side of the coin, there are things I could write that would definitely make me more money but that aren’t things I want to do right now. If I jammed out a straight-up Mil SF trilogy in a year, sold the audio rights, and self-published the e-books, I could definitely make more money than I am now. But that’s not how I want to write. I like to take my time with books, revise them 7 or 8 times. I want to make every book the best thing I can make at that point in my life. And I’m not saying there aren’t people who can crank out three quality books a year — there are. I’m just not one of them. And that’s okay. As they say, it is what it is.

So those are the two extremes of my personal bell curve. What I actually do is somewhere between. And a lot of the reason for that is based on choices I made in the past.

In 2019, I made the decision to write full time. I was teaching at the time, making about 40K a year, and writing novels in my off time. And I was miserable. I’d come home from work with papers to grade, lessons to plan, and a novel on deadline. And look, I know that I didn’t have the toughest situation in the world. Many have it much, much harder. My kids are out of the house. We have savings. (There’s a whole crap-ton of privilege in all of this. Not denying it. And I’ll talk about that part of things in a bit. Just bear with me for now with the idea that we all make our decisions based on things that we value.)

The fact remains that I was stressed. I wasn’t giving my best to anything. I was not myself at work, I wasn’t doing my best writing, and I wasn’t giving my wife the time that she deserves. I was unhappy. I figured at the time that I could take a pay cut and be happier. I have my military pension which comes with health care, which is a HUGE advantage when you’re trying to write full time in the US. (Again, more on why this is all a problem for the industry later in the post. But also, if you want more people from all socioeconomic situations to create art, you could, you know, fix health care. But I digress.)

My first book had earned out and my second was on its way to doing the same, and I was signing contracts for three more books. While I likely wouldn’t be replacing my teaching income, I’d be making some money, and in the end it wasn’t a difficult decision. Two years into it, and I’m quite happy with the choice I made. But it does impact what I write.

Late in 2021 we were negotiating my current contract. We had a couple different options on the table with Harper Voyager and some possible opportunities elsewhere. I had a book that I really wanted to write. And until I knew if that project was viable, I didn’t want to move on. So while we casually explored some other possibilities, I needed that information first. (And we had an option, so there was a legal obligation as well, though we weren’t really counting the days or anything.)

And here’s where the decision comes. If Voyager had offered me more than I could make anywhere else to do the project I wanted, it would have been easy. They didn’t. They offered me $25,000. And it’s fair, based on the possibilities and probabilities of what that book will earn given the architecture of traditional publishing. It’s a deal that I could earn out, but also one that I might not. It also happened to be the exact number that I had pre-decided that I needed in order to do the project.

Because yes, I really wanted to write the book. And yes, I absolutely wanted to write it with David Pomerico editing it, because I think he’s criminally underrated and we just work well together creatively. But at the same time, I did have a number. I couldn’t responsibly do it for less than that when I knew that it was a book that was going to take me a long time to write. I could probably write two different books–simpler books–in the same amount of time and sell them for at least the same amount per book (and possibly more, given the higher cuts I could get with non big-5 deals). So while I can’t quantify how much money I gave up, it’s significant.

So I chose the compromise because I could. Because I can afford it, I get to write the book that I want to write and have a great publisher help me do it.

And that’s a problem.

Not for me. I got what I wanted. I get to write the book I want to write for a price I can accept. But let’s talk about that number.

That is the problem. The problem is that I got a basic big 5 debut contract, and I earned out my first three books, and I’m getting $25,000 (pre-tax, pre-agent cut) to write the next one. To be clear again: I made that choice and I’m happy with it. The problem isn’t with me. It’s with the industry.

Because how many people can afford to spend six years to earn $25,000 for their next book? Who are we driving away? What great stories are we not getting because of the money?

Go back to what I said above. I’m writing the book I really want to write because I can afford to. What does that mean for all the great writers out there who can’t afford to? How many people can lean so far to the love side and away from the money? (and, on a related note–and this is a really important one–consider who those people we’re driving away are likely to be.)

I’m a 53 year-old man with pretty moderate spending habits who lives in a low-cost-of-living city and worked an entire career already before I ever started writing. That’s not a sustainable model.

There are three kinds of people writing for traditional publishers:

1. The one percent who make enough money to live (or even thrive) on.
   
2. People who can afford to (For whatever reason: generational wealth, supportive partner, other income, my situation)
   
3. People making huge sacrifices. And they are huge. Working two jobs (writing and something that pays the bills) is hard. Living below the poverty line is hard. Having to rely on someone else can create difficult situations, even in the cases where it is possible. (Also, for the record, being a primary caregiver for children is a job, even if it isn’t paid.)

And the problem with that third group is that it encompasses a higher percentage of marginalized writers than the other two groups. So that’s who it’s eventually driving away. A lot of that came to the forefront this past week with publishing professionals, but it’s the same with writers. You can only last on love for so long. It’s easy to justify it when you’re writing your first couple of books, because there’s the hope that you’re going to fall into group one. On book six, it’s a lot harder to fool yourself into believing that.

I don’t have any answers, so if you followed along this far expecting me to solve the pay issues in publishing, I apologize.

But to address a couple things sure to come up in this discussion:

No, self-publishing isn’t a cure-all for this. Yes, there are some people who do very well with it, and for those who do it well, it can absolutely pay better than traditional publishing. So yes, it’s a solution for some. But even there, the vast majority of authors aren’t making a living (though the reasons are somewhat different. And that’s a story for a self published author to tell, not me.)

No, Sanderson’s kickstarter didn’t change anything. He was already in group 1. Hit me up when a kickstarter creates a living wage for people in group 3. Apples and oranges.

No, small presses aren’t a solution. Yes, they pay a larger percentage of their earnings to authors, and that’s great. But with limited distribution, you’re trading a higher percentage of profits for the total number of books sold.

So…what can you do? What can we do? Well, if you’re the CEO of a major publisher, you can start by paying the people who create your product better. But then, you’re probably not reading this. And even if you are, you’re not going to do it. You have no motivation to as long as you can keep capitalizing on love.

As writers and readers, I think one thing we can do is respect people’s decisions. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a reader say ‘they just put that book out for money.’ You see it most in later books in a series if a reader thinks that the later books aren’t as great as the first. It happens. Here’s my response to that: So? First off, you don’t know why the author wrote it. Maybe they thought they had another great book in the series. But if they were just doing it because they knew that was their biggest payday? Okay. Books in a reasonably successful series make money, and we shouldn’t begrudge an author making money.

Here’s a real life example. When my third book, COLONYSIDE came out, it spiked the sales of both the first two books in the series significantly. Thousands of books. Both of those books had earned out, and so for every sale I got paid. It’s not a number I can calculate exactly, but it was between $8000 and $12000 dollars. That’s on top of what I got paid for COLONYSIDE. When THE MISFIT SOLDIER released three weeks ago, my backlist sold about 100 extra copies and then went back to steady state. So yeah…putting out another book in a series can be valuable.

(On a personal note, for those of my fans who have specifically asked me a lot of times about a 4th Planetside book, and are now wondering why I haven’t done that, given what I’ve said here, and well…there are reasons. I’m pretty open about things, but I’m going to keep this one for myself for now. Maybe I’ll tell that story some other day.)

What else? When an author (or publishing professional) walks away, respect it. I absolutely guarantee that it was a hard decision for them.

I wish I had more ideas beyond ‘This sucks, pay people more to create the stuff that people love.’

And I’m not here to say everything is bleak and there’s no hope. We’re seeing at least some change in SFF publishing with who is getting the debut deals with real money to them, with who is getting promotional support. It’s not my place to give my opinion on whether it’s enough or good or even okay, but I do think I can safely say that it’s better than it was ten years ago.

So what did I accomplish here? I don’t know. Maybe nothing. It doesn’t feel like much. But I wanted to say this stuff out loud. Because I can afford to.

Tags: Author Income, Publishing, Salary