Somewhere, there’s an IRS agent who is going to be looking at my taxes and wondering what on earth is happening. If you’re reading, IRS person, I promise I’m not cheating. In fact, let this post be a reference for why you don’t need to audit me.

The business side of writing is, on its best days, weird, and on its worst days, nerve-wracking. This is one of the weird parts.

First off, some basic information. Writers don’t make a lot of money. Except for the ones that do. But most of us don’t. The majority of writers, even the ones you’ve heard of, don’t make enough to live on. Many have day jobs or spouses with day jobs or do other, non-novel-writing things to make ends meet. This is especially true in the US because of health care.

So up front, let me say that by being able to write full time, I’m one of the fortunate. I know this.

But I just received my 1099 from my agent yesterday, and the number on it is lower than the number that was on last year’s, and I want to discuss it. Because somehow, despite the fact that my career is ascending, it’s normal. Which doesn’t make sense without context.

After all, in most jobs, as you continue in your career, you expect your pay to go up. At least a little, most years. And nominally, my pay has gone up. Harper Voyager is paying me more for the book I’m writing now than for the book I wrote last year. And I sold more books in 2021 than I did in 2020. So between both of those things, you’d think I made more money. But the numbers are right there. I didn’t. So let’s look at why.

Let me also say up front that this isn’t a sad story where I’m going to tell you about how I’m spiraling into oblivion. As I said, my career is on an upward trend. This is all about accounting. Woo…exciting!

1. The structure of a contract. My contracts with Harper Voyager (HV) pay my advances in two parts (Note: That’s really good. A lot of publishers pay in thirds, or even quarters, and trust me, getting it in two parts is best for the writer.) So what that means is that I get half the advance when I sign, and half when the book is accepted* A deal can be for any number of books. My second contract with HV was for two books–Colonyside and The Misfit Soldier (available on 2/22/22!) With a two book deal, the advances are basically broken into four parts: two books times two halves. The thing is, I get the first half of both books when I sign the contract.

So when it comes to a two book deal, the advance money tends to be front loaded into the first year. Because of those four halves, you get at least two of them right when you sign, and you probably get the third because you write the first book and it gets accepted. So basically you get 3/4 of the value of the contract in year one, and 1/4 in year two.

I should note here that advances provide most of the money that traditionally published authors will ever see. In my case, I’ve earned out my advances on my first three books, so I get royalties on new sales. If I didn’t, the year-to-year ups and downs would be even bigger.

*accepted is the term for when the publisher is satisfied with the book after edits. In practice, it’s right around when they’re sending it for copy edits.

2. I didn’t sign any new contracts in 2021. When you read that, it sounds bad, almost like, “Oh no, Mike’s career is over!” It’s not. It just happens that I signed two contracts before 2021–the two book deal with HV and a one book deal with Audible Originals (AO) and spent most of 2020 and 2021 writing the three books encompassed by those two contracts. But because I signed those deals prior to 2021, most of the money for those two deals came in previous years. In 2021, I did get the acceptance payment for The Misfit Soldier and the acceptance payment for The Weight of Command, my AO book. But as you can see, with three books under two contracts, I got two payments out of the total six this year, meaning I got 2/3 of my money in previous years.

Calendar years, as they relate to publishing, are pretty random. As it happens, I signed the previous contract in January of 2020, so 2020, on paper, looks like a really good year, which is part of why 2021 is smaller in comparison. Also, in 2021, we negotiated a contract for my next book with HV–the one I’m writing now. I just haven’t signed it yet, so I haven’t gotten paid. I’ll sign that soon and get the first half of my advance. And there’s a good chance that I’ll deliver that book by the end of the year and maybe have it accepted (acceptance will actually probably trickle into 2023) so there’s a chance I might get the full value of that advance in 2022. But even then, the new contract is worth less than the previous.

But wait…if that’s true, how then is my pay going up? Because this contract is for one book where the previous was for two. And while I’m being paid more per book, it’s not quite double.

As an aside, if you’re wondering why I’m already writing a book if there’s no contract, it’s because both sides have agreed to it. We’ve settled on an amount and an outline and a delivery date. We’re just waiting on lawyers to work through the little details. Could one side or the other technically still back out? I guess. But neither of us are going to do that.

I think we’re not supposed to talk about stuff like this? But I can’t see what it hurts, so I’ll talk about it if I want.

3. Royalty payments are slow. HV, like most big publishers, pays royalties twice a year. I don’t know if the dates are the same for everybody (probably they are) but mine pay on June 30th and December 31st. In theory. In practice, the publisher has 90 days from the close of the royalty period to pay. Guess how many of those days they take? So in practice, I get paid on April 1st and October 1st*

*I should note that this is actually quite helpful, as there are quarterly estimated taxes due right around those two dates.

So how did that affect my earnings in 2021? A lot. Colonyside released on December 29th, 2020. By June 30th of 2021, the end of the next royalty period, it had almost, but not quite, earned out its advance. So when I got my check on October 1st, I didn’t earn any additional money for that book. What I got was the continuing royalties from Planetside and Spaceside. When I get my check on April 1st of this year, it will also include royalties from Colonyside, after a deduction to cover the last bit of the advance.

4. There’s a pandemic happening. This one is actually pretty minor in how it affects me, but it does, so I’m including it. The only place the pandemic hit my writing finances was with foreign rights. So it’s a small percentage of my income. A lot of foreign publishers were hit even harder than US ones, and that slowed down the publishing of some of my books. Slower publishing schedules, slower payments.

5. So what will 2022 look like? It’s hard to say. For sure I’ll sign my one book contract and get half of that advance. I might get the second half of that, but probably not. The book is due in September, and if my editor gets it back to me in November (which is pretty likely) then I’ll get it back to him, revised, in December. Then we’ll probably not see payment until January or February. And that would be just about the best case scenario. If either the editor or I have to delay, or it takes more than one round of edits, it could be longer.

So with just the single advance payment, I’d figure earnings for 2022 to be right about the same as 2021.

Unless we sign a new deal. Which…we might? Here’s how that works. The book I’m writing now is due in September. That means in October, I need something else to write while I wait for my editor to do his thing. To be writing something new in October, we need to negotiate a new deal before then. And we will. Sometime this spring my agent and I will start sending out proposals and exploring our options. I honestly don’t know what that is going to look like. It may be to a single publisher, it may be to multiple. It might be for one book, it might be for as many as three. But what I do know is that by summer, we’ll have figured it out and my agent will be negotiating the major points. By fall, enough of that deal (or deals) will be in place so I’ll know what to write next.*

*If that shatters the illusion of things like muses or creativity driving the art, I’m sorry. But this is a business post, and that’s how the business works. The next book is a product of what I want to write crossed with what a publisher is willing to pay me to write. As it happens, I’ve got three or four things that I want to write after the one I’m writing now, so I’m pretty happy to let the business side decide which one comes first.

If I sign that contract in late 2022, which is possible, then I’ll almost certainly make more in 2022 than I did in 2021–possibly by a wide margin, depending on how many books it’s for. If not, then we start the cycle over again with 2023.

6. How does the nature of payments affect the business? For me, it doesn’t. But I’m an old man with savings, healthcare, and a pension from my time in the military. I already own a house. As long as I know the money is coming, it doesn’t matter when it gets here.

For the average author trying to make it on writing alone? It’s tough. There can be challenges to inconsistent pay beyond just the ability to pay the bills. Think about trying to buy a house without being able to demonstrate a consistent income.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about this, because it’s not my story, but I didn’t want to write the post without at least acknowledging it as an issue that’s out there for a lot of writers.

I think it’s common to try to separate the business from the art. But for the artist, a lot of times, you can’t.