I See it Half-Full

On the one hand, the number of people traditionally publishing (meaning those who send manuscripts to agents and publishers) has got to be an enormous number, even compared to the number of people self publishing. And those trying to traditionally publish but failing are making no money whereas very, very few self published authors make no money.

You are now pointing out that because of self publishing the total number of people making a living from writing is going up quite a bit. That’s a huge win. As you point out, the percentages still might not be great either way but the totals are better.

But with self publishing, there has got to have been an explosion of people who are at least making some money from their art/ their hobby. And that’s enormous.

When I was in high school, to blow off steam, I would head out to my garage and build furniture and carve ducks and wooden figurines. I loved it. It was a hobby. I expected to make no money from it. It was fun.

Writing is my adult hobby. Sure, I hope it becomes something more but my wanting to create more stories (my art) is not dependent on whether I make merely pizza money from it or pay the light bill money from it. My wanting to create my stories is internally driven, as it should be for all writers. I can not possibly believe that anybody following this discussion is honestly treating writing as some kind of investment similar to other investments. It’s not; it’s art, and with the rise of ebooks, there is a little more opportunity out there for people to earn money from this art. Pretty awesome.

Hugh, I always appreciate the clarity and even handedness you bring to these discussions. Keep it up.

Dan

I disagree with the overall assessment that there are hordes of authors trying to make a living writing fiction. Is it a very hard thing to do? Absolutely. Are millions trying? I do not think so. I went through a writing grad program and saw both students and professors who actively wrote. I saw very, very few who every tried to make a living writing and none who ever tried to make a living writing fiction.

When we say “there are so many authors trying to make a living,” or something similar, who are we counting? In traditional publishing, are we counting the many who wrote one or two books and stopped? Are we including those who never made it over the hurdle of being published in a traditional way? How many books are floating around being queried on at any given time? We’d say there’s a huge amount, but how many against are comparing notes on which books have been counted twice or three times or four?

What is a “Living?” I know of two well-respected science fiction authors, both traditionally published, who have day jobs that bring in six figures. One disclosed to me that he’d need to be in the upper tier of authors to consider quitting his day job because he and his family are used to making a certain amount of money. Are these two writers trying to make a living writing fiction?

What about the many, many self-published authors who are doing it for fun? Or who quit when they realize it isn’t a gold rush?

Hugh has made a point to me before which I will relate here. He’s said that the self-published author is really only competing with about the top 1% of other self-published authors. The rest are not trying to produce top quality books or trying to sell them or trying to make a living.

I spoke with another science fiction author who has done some surveys in this area. There aren’t that many published science fiction authors working at a given time. About ten percent appear to be making a living. I would not say the other 90% are necessarily trying to make a living. Some are. Absolutely they are. Many no doubt would like to make a living doing so, but it doesn’t look feasible to them. But there are those who decide that’s what they are going to do” make a living writing fiction. They find a way to make it work. Take Chuck Wendig as an example. he busts his ass. He markets his ass off. He works very very hard. He has not, to my knowledge, had a breakout hit. Most of his work is published traditionally., but he makes a living doing it. He markets himself like an indie and produces the amount of output like an indie.

I know some other science fiction authors who also work hard, but they do not market themselves, they do not produce multiple streams of income. They do not really seem to be putting in the work it takes to make a living.

If ten percent of science fiction writers are making a living, that’s a pretty good number. It’s a better number is you realize that, as Hugh points out, we are looking at the totality.

I suspect that if we were allowed to peer into Amazon’s data vaults, we would find interesting things. We are discussing a topic with very dodgy statistics in an industry that historically hides numbers. Big Data is not involved here or, where it is, it is not sharing it’s findings with us. There’s a lot of assumptions and a lot of exaggeration because that’s what makes for headlines. “Writing is hard.” “How many self-publishers are making money? Very few.”

What isn’t sexy is a headline like this: “If You’re Moderately Talented and Work Really Hard, Making a Living as a Writer of Fiction is Difficult But Feasible.”

Not sexy, but probably true.