15 votes

How to be a professional author and not die screaming and starving in a lightless abyss

3 comments

  1. [3]
    JoylessAubergine
    Link
    Very interesting peak into the world of an author This is one thing i learned from one of the authors at /r/fantasy (Mark Lawrence maybe). Someone asked him how he tracks sales abroad and he...

    Very interesting peak into the world of an author

    It’s Hard To Know How Many Books You’ve Sold

    This is one thing i learned from one of the authors at /r/fantasy (Mark Lawrence maybe). Someone asked him how he tracks sales abroad and he essentially said he has no idea and just occasionally gets a cheque for "residuals from X" or something along those lines. The system seems liable to so much corruption.

    Your Day Job? Don’t Quit It

    I know a lot of creative types hate the idea of it but many of the best SFF authors have kept a 9-5 job the majority of the career. Not only for the benefits and money but also because of the routine which encourages them to write, where if they was at home all day they might find themselves procrastinating and finding other ways to busy themselves when the writing gets tough.

    Conversely many of the best also treat their writing like a 9-5 job, which would be a rough routine spending 6-8 hours writing and researching and 8 hours at a "job". So i guess you have to find what suits your personality the best.

    4 votes
    1. Sahasrahla
      Link Parent
      Ever hear what happened to Chuck Palahniuk? Chuck Palahniuk 'close to broke' as agent's accountant faces fraud charges: Fight Club author says his income has dwindled, as Darin Webb is charged...

      The system seems liable to so much corruption.

      Ever hear what happened to Chuck Palahniuk?

      Chuck Palahniuk 'close to broke' as agent's accountant faces fraud charges: Fight Club author says his income has dwindled, as Darin Webb is charged with embezzling $3.4m from his literary agency (The Guardian, May 2018)

      one of the authors at /r/fantasy

      Another /r/fantasy author I really admire is Michael J. Sullivan. He was a traditionally published author (with some pretty big deals, at least six figures I think) but he got to the point where he didn't like the deal offered by his publisher so he self-published instead. (I think the sticking point was he wanted to handle the audio rights himself but his publisher insisted on buying them for less money than he could make otherwise.) The more I learn about the publishing industry the more I wish more authors would do that and help break the oligopoly of the Big 5.

      I mean, it's kind of ridiculous isn't it? Authors are the foundation of the publishing industry but they aren't getting a living wage out of it. Rather, the publishing industry is being subsidized by "day jobs" that pay their workers instead. Imagine being a programmer and making a profit for your employer but having to work a second job at Starbucks because you weren't getting paid. (Well, some programmers work for equity only and do have day jobs, but when's the last time an author was paid with a 10% stake in Penguin Random House?)

      Of course, many would argue that authors are different—more comparable to hobbyists than employees—and to an extent I agree. Many aspiring writers want to bask in the glow of being published more than they want to make a living at it and many established authors are happy to keep their regular jobs and write on the side. At the same time though, even best-selling authors with a solid body of work can struggle to make a non-precarious living. There are also many industry-standard practices working against authors: very low royalty rates (perhaps as low as 2.25%*), mandatory to have an agent (who takes a further 15% cut) before they'll work with you, non-negotiable hoovering up of rights (ebook, audio, maybe overseas), often having to handle the majority of promotions, unpredictable and delayed payment schedules, no health insurance (I think), rights that will realistically never revert to you even if your publisher barely sells your book, and who knows what else.

      * To be fair, the author in that blog post argues that 2.25% is reasonable and he's happy with it.

      Obviously this is important for anyone wanting to be a writer (or anyone who just wants to see them get a fair deal) but I think it's important for everyone else too. Authors create a lot of the culture that we consume (both directly through novels and through the book-to-movie/show pipeline) and that informs us about who we are as a society. How many marginalized voices will we hear if we insist that career authors can only be those who are independently wealthy, those who are married to someone with a good income, or those who have the energy left to sacrifice their spare time outside of work and family obligations? Of course, many people even in dire circumstances have written and published novels, but like any other profession it can take years to really get good at it. If new authors aren't supported and if there's no realistic path to having a good career as a novelist then how many authors will stick with it, and how many people will seriously pursue writing with no hope of a financial light at the end of the tunnel?

      I don't know what the solution is but I think it will come from the bottom-up, with more authors and aspiring-authors recognizing how exploitative the industry is and going with an alternative. The Big 5 publishers act like (and are treated like) they're the only game in town but self-publishing is more viable than ever. It has a (not unfairly earned) stigma associated with it but any authors who can get past that will find larger royalties and more power to direct the path of their career. It's not a perfect solution, and working with Amazon is far from an ideal alternative, but the more that path is seen as viable (and the more authors take it instead of working with traditional publishers) the more those traditional publishers will actually have to offer a fair deal to keep talent.

      7 votes
    2. imperialismus
      Link Parent
      Yeah. Ted Chiang has won four Hugos, four Nebula awards and four Locus awards. One of his stories was made into a film that received 8 Oscar nominations. He still works as a technical writer. The...

      I know a lot of creative types hate the idea of it but many of the best SFF authors have kept a 9-5 job the majority of the career.

      Yeah. Ted Chiang has won four Hugos, four Nebula awards and four Locus awards. One of his stories was made into a film that received 8 Oscar nominations. He still works as a technical writer. The man writes all day for his job and then somehow finds the time and willpower to write award-winning stories in his spare time. Glen Cook worked many years in an auto assembly plant while writing up to three books a year.

      I can't say I agree with Chuck Wendig that that Medium article is a good article. It's a story about an author who got absurdly generous contracts, and somehow managed to lose it all due to financial mismanagement and chronic naivete. I'm not glowing with schadenfraude at the thought of someone in dire straits financially (I don't wish that on anyone), but her complete inability to take any responsibility for her own choices and her own failure to seek out information is not endearing. Blaming everyone else for not going above and beyond to help you when you display zero initiative to help yourself is just immature. I would be more sympathetic if she accepted a little bit of responsibility for her own choices. Then you find out it's all an ad for her mentoring business. "You need someone like me to not end up like me! All for the low, low price of $lotsamoney."

      She even has a course called "Stop being a baby about editing." You don't get to call anyone else a baby when you're utterly unable to take any responsibility for your own mistakes.

      6 votes