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One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
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Klebert L. Hall
11/19/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
Well, I could certainly never write a book that anyone would buy.

OTOH, I've never made $35,000 a year in my life, and at least she gets to work inside.

Do writers actually get into the field for the money? I've always had the impression that most writers write because they can't stop themselves. If you can get paid for something you're driven to do anyway, isn't that kind of a win?
-Kle.
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nowayman
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
Her agent sucks. End of story. If her agent doesn't suck, then she needs to get busy with the typewriter and turn that "NYT Bestseller" into her tagline for every negotiation, script treatment, and next book option out there. And write like it meant her soul was on the line. A good writer inspires. "Poor writer" is redundant, and she should fight tooth and nail for her success. If she has and this is the result, then take heed that she has something most writers don't have when she proffers her next book.

A resume that lists the NYTimes Paperback Bestseller list. I'd hazard a guess that means more than my treatment of a humorous group of scientists to a publishing house, and neither she nor I should be bitter about that. She hasn't made it, but she's getting there. That's more celebratory than cautious. A word of advice I found from the great poet Courage Wolf, "When the going gets tough... keep going. "
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Bootknife-Jackson
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
i'd rather be a millionare type of writer like Neil Gaiman. where do i sign up for that!?
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SJ_Edwards
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
The writer John Scalzi posted a piece on his blog back in October [whatever.scalzi.com] about the fascinating tax returns of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the '30s: "Living on $500,000 a year" [www.theamericanscholar.org] written by William J. Quirk.

...... there's a piece in Variety today by Dave McNary, "Little diversity progress among writers" [www.variety.com] , with some pretty appalling earnings numbers [this courtesy of a tweet [twitter.com] from C.J.Carter in Albuquerque, who has taken on the humongous task of writing (amongst many, many other things) the scripts for a complete Season 3 of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles [cjcs.com] ...... OMG!!!)

....... and I was banging on and on (and on) about this, in relationship to other media [TV and the internet 'episodes' of Joss Whedon's Dr.Horrible (and Dollhouse and TSCC)] the other day [io9.com] [Be warned, it's very, very tl:dr! : ) ].
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SJ_Edwards
11/19/09

@SJ_Edwards:
Just to put her figures in perspective .......

She gives her gross margin (that's GROSS, ladies and germs) as 6 to 8% of the book's cover price of $7.99.

But try not to think of the 48 to 64 cents per book, she's getting. Because that would just be too depressing.

Instead try thinking about the last time you bought a lottery ticket. That warm tingley feeling of hope and anticipation as the clerk took your slip, fed it through the machine, pressed a button, handed you back your ticket and took your dollar (and probably didn't even have to make change).

They just made 5%.
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Alessar
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
That's actually more than I expected someone publishing a paperback to make. I was thinking 15k.
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rek
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
I'm not reading anything with "Twilight", "Darkyn" or "lost soul" on the cover.
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Counterglow
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
I seem to recall a fairly famous author once saying, "The relationship between a publisher and a writer is the same as the relationship between a knife and a throat."
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moifauxmail
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
Did anyone here pick up Io9 contributor Jeff Vandermeer's "Booklife"? Because rather than mope or snipe about Ms. Viehl's situation, I advise you do just that.

Even someone hugely famous as Neil Gaiman does not just write one book a year. Professional writers always have a number of pots boiling. Journalism, movies, articles, fiction, non-fiction. Hell, the very gifted David Mamet has said that his work touching up scripts for blockbusters made him more scratch than many of his plays. Nabokov taught, Faulkner wrote for Hollywood. Pots boiling. Pots Boiling.

Being a working writer is work. The notion that you can simply pen one book a year is a lovely fiction.
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Faustroll
11/18/09

@moifauxmail: Being a Tony-award winning play write doesn't pay the bills either. Tom Stoppard does punch up writing for scripts (he did some uncredited dialogue work for Star Wars Ep 3, which makes me wonder just how bad a director Spielberg is for making Stoppard dialogue sound like wood chips and blackboard screaches).
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moifauxmail
11/18/09

@Faustroll: You are of my mind, and I like it.

I just remembered, John Scalzi has written about the working life of a writer on his "Whatever" blog for years.

Anyone who thinks "I shall be a writer, and I shall be rich." is akin to a child saying "I shall be a millionaire when I grow up."

Unless that child is Paris Hilton. And then, well, more's the pity.
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Sunshineyness
11/18/09

@moifauxmail: I met Christopher Moore once when he spoke to our writing class back in college. He said the only reason he quit his day job was when someone optioned one of his books. It secured his ability to get advances from his publisher and to continue to be published because his work sparked Hollywood interest and publishers live off of that.

I think most writers who have money are only thus so because of adaptations and what not. I was told that the average is at least six figures unless it's a hot property with a bidding war or what not.

I'm always surprised when I hear of authors unwilling to give options out because of that.
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moifauxmail
11/18/09

@Sunshineyness: Joe Straczynski talked about how some writers lived on options getting renewed and passed around for years on end, never getting developed, but studios still wanted to own the property.

I'm a non-fiction writer and I have a day job. Every year I see my income from writing grow, especially once I started viewing it as a job and not in some sacroscant "MY WRITING" fashion. For every Stepahanie Meyer out there plunking out a mega-million bestseller on the first toss there are hundreds, if not thousands of writers making very decent money by working on their craft.

It's the difference between being financially prudent and buying a lot of lottery tickets.
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klhra006
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
This is news how? In the last 50 years there have been maybe two dozen people in this country who made a real living off writing fiction. And that's if you include "mainstream" work. In the SF/fantasy fields, there's maybe a dozen.

Here is the cold, hard, ugly truth: NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE READ. The number of people literate enough to be interested in reading anything other than the sports page or the lies in the Penthouse letters section is a small fraction of the population. The number of people who read regularly is a small fraction of them. The number of people who read SF/fantasy...

This is why the best advice you can ever give a wouldbe writer is "don't give up your day job."
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riotboy519001
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
This explains a lot--70,000 sold to make the NYT Bestseller list? That's pathetic. The reason authors aren't making bank is because NO one's reading anymore. Yes, the publisher's cut is absurdly high too, but seriously. I assumed NYT Bestseller status would be at least double that number.
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ToonX5
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
Its just like any form of entertainment: sometimes you get the pay off and sometimes you don't. You just have to lace up and make your next album/movie/episode/game/book

something spectacular by taking what you learned from your failure and turning it into success. We can be millionaires that way!!!
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hokum
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
"Even lost souls can find love"

*retch*

With a (likely) crappy novel that's jumping on the bandwagon of a certain crappy vampire romance series, I reckon she was lucky to earn anything at all.

Bookstore employees should be given stun guns, to be used on any person purchasing Twilight or the awful shit attempting to ride its coattails.
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aubreyf
11/18/09

@hokum: Do you have a list somewhere of acceptable books to purchase? Can you forward that to me so I know that I'm reading something cool?
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hokum
11/18/09

@aubreyf: Nah you can figure it out yourself. If it it involves sparkly vampires then put the book down.
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All_Thumbs
11/18/09

@aubreyf: Don't forget to burn all the books not on the list.
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michaelmdance001
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
This is interesting, but it doesn't sound that bad to me.

How long did it take her to write Twilight Fall, a 336-page paperback? 3-4 months?

So she gets $25K *after* taxes for doing what she loves for one-third of a year's worth of work. Waah?

I'm still at the just-making-rent line, so that sounds like a pretty good gig to me.
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NonElitist
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
I write non-fiction books (about 5 or 6 per year) and it's a good living but I'm not making Stephen King mad money... she's right, though - one book or novel per year is not going to make you a living and I have plenty of writer friends who still have their "real" jobs and write in evenings and on weekends.
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braak: You are, as usual, completely correct.
11/18/09

In reply to One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
Man. This really did depress the crap out of me.

I need. Coffee. And booze.
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Alexis
11/18/09

@braak: You are, as usual, completely correct.: This actually saddened me.
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