If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “How much do author’s make per book?” or “Can I make a living as a writer?” Then you’re in the right place.
Is it possible to make a living writing fiction?
So you want to be a writer? Well, how do you plan on funding your writing career? Because the reality is, (unfortunately) very few writers make a living writing stories full-time.
Now, I’m not talking about career writers like journalists or advertisers. I’m talking about fiction writers. The romanticized version of the flighty author staying up late to drink cheap bourbon at a desk overlooking a city landscape after dinner with contemporary literary giants who plan to shape the world in their intellectual image. Those people don’t exist. They’re a fantasy thought up and perpetuated through movies and stories. The reality is much, much sadder.
However, if you think like an entrepreneur, it actually is possible to live life as a writer. There are actually multiple ways to make a living writing. If done the right way, you can build in all the time in the world to write your passion projects because you don’t have a typical structure to your day. Doesn’t that sound great?
But first, some cold, hard facts.
My year of writing failures
When I graduated college, I was sure writer fame and fortune was headed my way. I half-heartedly applied for adult jobs. That way I’d have an excuse to live at my parents house. I read and wrote all day. I knew I’d never need a day job. I wasn’t a cog in a machine. I was outside the system, glaring at it ruthlessly with pen in hand. Alas, a year later I was sitting in a cubicle at one of the world’s largest financial institutions.
I became a cog. And I wrote less.
“The Authors Guild’s 2018 Author Income Survey, the largest survey of writing-related earnings by American authors ever conducted finds incomes falling to historic lows to a median of $6,080 in 2017, down 42 percent from 2009.” Author’s Guild.
Writers simply aren’t well-compensated for their time because there’s a vast number of books and a swelling applicant pool. Imagine if people still flocked movie theaters for a two hundred year old movie? (Okay bad example because movies haven’t been around that long but you’ll see my point) Well, that’s essentially what happens when people read Pride and Prejudice. You’re competing against every book ever written. Not just the ones written this year.
This destroys our income as writers. If you can choose the book I wrote or 129,864,880 of the other books out there, I don’t stand a chance. Not when 27% of adults are reading books each year.
This landscape isn’t likely to change because there’s less people reading and more people writing. Simple economics: supply and demand.
If everyone read but only 10 people could write books. Those 10 people would be billionaires. But writers are selling snow cones at the North Pole.
As of a few years ago, about 1,000 people in North America were making a living writing. (Though the rise of self-publishing may have changed that number a bit).
“…royalties and advances — are also down, almost 30 percent for full-time writers since 2009.” The New York Times
Do writers make good money?
Imagine having the freedom to write whenever you wanted. What would it be like to be your own boss while royalty checks hit the bank every few weeks? Sounds pretty sweet, right? Well, it’s not going to be like that at first. However, if you can make some intelligent decisions, you can live the writerly lifestyle.
”I still had a job when a publisher bought We Are Never Meeting in Real Life for $75,000. So my agent gets 15 percent of that. You get one-third when you sell it, the next third, when you turn in the fully edited, copyedited manuscript. So like a year later, two years later, however long it takes you. And then you get the final installment on publication. These things can be like a year apart. So divide an advance into thirds, and off the top of each third, take 15 percent that my agent gets for doing his job of selling it. Then, depending on your taxes, you take like 30 percent for the government. So what you have left, if you don’t have another job, that’s what you have to live on until your next installment.” – Samantha Irby in The Cut
All writers think they’re different. We have to. We have to believe that what we’re writing is bound for a bestseller list and a 7-figure advance. And that’s awesome. I’m sure you’ve heard of writers who become famous off of their first book. But do you know why you’ve heard those stories? Because they’re exceedingly rare.
More concerning is the majority of writers who quit. I sincerely hope you’re like the writer who hits the big time on your first book. But I’m more invested in ensuring writers don’t quit. There’s a life out there for all of us where we get to live our dreams.
I thought the same thing. I thought I’d write a book. Sell it. Live small until I could sell the next. On and on we go until a book is optioned for a movie or becomes a bestseller or both!
“There’s no other job in the world where you get your master’s degree in that field and you’re like, ‘Well, I might make zero or I might make $5 million!’” – Cheryl Strayed, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living,
Without an understanding of the problem, aspiring writers will always be just that: aspiring. We need to understand the odds (and hope we beat them) but no one quits their job before the lottery numbers are picked.
However, instead of saying “Don’t quit your day job” I’m going to give you different advice. “Change your day job.”
How to make a living as a writer
It’s true that fiction writers don’t make much money. However, it’s not necessarily true that people with writing skills don’t make money. Let’s take a look at some careers here that (even if added as a side hustle) can massively grow your audience, increase your likelihood of getting published, and can actually pay the rent!
Ways to make money as a writer:
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Copywriting
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Freelancing
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Blog
Copywriting
Copywriting can be a really solid way to earn income. Copywriters also have the opportunity to work on their own terms (unless they sign on to an agency). This means you can control how many clients you take on, when you work, and what your deadlines are.
There’s a steep learning curve for copywriters. However, I took the Comprehensive Copywriting Course and highly recommend it. This free webinar talks through copywriting (it’s also an affiliate link so at no cost to you, I receive a percentage of your enrollment if you sign up). The community is awesome and answers all of your questions. And I’ve taken a lot of online courses. This one exceeded my expectations and was well worth the cost.
I’d suggest checking out the webinar and seeing if it feels right to you.
Copywriting isn’t like other forms of writing. However, all that time you spent working on your craft will carry over and help you adapt your words to the preferred format. It also seems to be the most lucrative and fastest way to earn location independence, meaning you can work from anywhere!
If you’re interested in copywriting, I did a more in-depth article here.
Check out how this new copywriter went from $0 to $8,300 per month in just 3 months!
Freelance
Freelancing has a variety of niches (content writing, editing, beta reading, etc.).
Freelancing seems like it would be easy. Throw up an account on Fiverr or Upwork and let the clients roll in. However, freelancing can be a slow start. The problem with freelancing websites is there are more freelancers than jobs available. So (especially when you’re starting out) you’ll probably have to lower your prices early on, gain some customers, testimonials, and
I’m not an expert on freelancing. However, it’s worth nothing that a book editor on Fiverr charges pennies on the dollar to what an editor with a website charges.
If I were starting out as a freelance editor, I’d build a website. Offer my services for free for a few writers. Edit their books. Get testimonials. Throw them up on my website. Then market my services for a much higher price than you’re going to get on these other freelance sites. Again, not an expert. But it’s how I’d do it.
“…a general shift toward a gig economy or “hustling,” in which people juggle an assortment of jobs to make up for the lack of a stable income.” The New York Times
Blog
Obviously you’re here, reading my blog. So I’m going to say this is a useful writing technique or I would have dropped it by now.
So instead of talking about blogging in general, I’m going to talk about why I personally started a blog.
I always thought blogs were this self-indulgent place where people who lived boring (to anyone else) lives and talked about it incessantly. I thought it was a “Dear diary” situation. However, I feel like a moron because while I held that believe, I used blogs all the time to learn how to do things. I thought all these people had fancy website degrees and had to go to some school and get a higher degree to learn how to…NO! They don’t.
They just want to help people.
Now, there are ways to make money blogging (affiliate links, ad revenue, promotions, etc.). However, according to a few bloggers I’ve talked to, most blogs don’t make money for the first year. It’s an investment. And don’t worry, blogs cost about $10-$15 per month to run. And honestly, if you choose SquareSpace or Wix or even WordPress.com, you don’t need to know anything about coding to get started.
However, if you’re looking to get started in earnest, you may want to start with a course. There are a lot out there. But make sure you do your own research and due diligence!
“Writing for magazines and newspapers was once a solid source of additional income for professional writers, but the decline in freelance journalism and pay has meant less opportunity for authors to write for pay. Many print publications, which offered the highest rate, have been shuttered altogether.” (The New York Times).
If you’re looking to start blogging but don’t want to jump straight into building a website, I get it! So what’s an alternative? Well, in an unsettled climate like this one, it makes more sense for you to own your content. Not saying you shouldn’t sell a story if you get the opportunity. But it’s clear that the world is trending away from that kind of literary consumption. This is why I suggest Medium.com as an easy way to start blogging.
More on Medium.com when we get back from our commercial break!
Medium
Aaaaaaaand we’re back! Medium.com is so weird. I just had to say it. They change their rules constantly. Their distribution rules are cloaked in mystery. No one can guess what articles will go viral and when.
However, despite what people say, I think it’s 100% worth writing on Medium right now. But not for the reason most people think.
Sure, you can make money on Medium. (Good money if you become an established writer). However, with the increase in writers flocking to the platform and many already-established writers there, it’s not going to be easy.
I really see it as a way to gain followers for your writing and point them somewhere. So I use Medium.com to promote my blog and my newsletter. So anyone who reads my article gets a link to my blog and a link to sign up for my newsletter. I talked about why this is so powerful and important and every writer should be doing this in a post already.
So yeah, I think Medium is vital for writers. It’s great if you can make some cash. It’s also fine (in my opinion) if you just cover the cost of your membership (about $5) and can drive traffic to your other content areas.
If this sounds intriguing and you want to know more. I’m running a FREE 5-day Medium crash course to get you set up. And a 30-day support group to help you gain 100+ followers in 30 days. Even if you’re already on Medium but have less than 100 followers, this will totally be worth it. I’ve been on Medium for less than 2 months, wrote 10 articles, and have almost 300 followers. I’ll show you how I do it (and I’ll even pepper in some newsletter tricks!)
The one caveat is that there are limited spots available because I want to be sure I’m helping everyone. So don’t wait. Sign up now!
Key Takeaways
The chances of making a living as a writer can fit through the eye of a needle. If you’ve been writing for a while, you know it’s not an easy path. But it’s also not a choice. It’s a calling. If you can do anything else, then do it. But some of us poor souls just can’t escape the power of the written word. So what do we do?
If you’re struggling to make a living writing. Or if you loathe your day job and need a change. There are options out there for you. I wish I knew this earlier. That’s why I’m sharing it.
You can be a copywriter, a blogger, and/or a freelancer. There’s good money to be made in the world of words. However, you have to invest your time (and sometimes money) to break in. Remember, if it was easy everyone would do it!
In the end, if you work hard, build a career and a life you can be proud of, then you’re well on your way.
And some day, when you’re writing a novel in the mornings, finishing up some work for clients in the afternoons, and blogging in the evenings you’ll be happy you started today.
Some of the links on this blog are affiliate links. At no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission from some sites if you make a purchase. Please know that I have experience with all of these companies and services. I only recommend them because I know they will be helpful in launching a writing career. By using these affiliate links you’re helping me to keep my blog up and running. Thanks!
