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Median pay for full-time writers about $20k. For part-time just over $6k. Obviously not sustainable for the vast majority of working writers. With numbers like this, it's difficult to even call it a "profession" which is deeply distressing. nytimes.com/2019/01/05/boo…
One thing I'm curious about is the true universe of respondents. It says that the $20k figure is for people who identify as "full-time book authors." I'm about to publish my 7th book in an 18 year span by I wouldn't identify that way. Is my sort of position included in this data?
I'm a full-time writer and last year a good 95% of my income came from writing or writing-related activities, and I even sold two books, but the books are a relatively small piece of the whole pie. I have years of near zero book income but still make my living as a writer.
The notion that I could support myself through writing books seems pretty fantastical at this point. I definitely always want to be working on a book, but they're simply not going to be the kind of work that could ever generate consistent enough income to live on.
Maybe that changes if Why They Can't Write and/or The Writer's Practice break into a perpetual academic market (fingers crossed, spin in a circle, spit over my left shoulder), but to make a plan around the kind of future would be beyond foolish.
I'm extremely fortunate in having two steady freelance gigs each of which puts me over the median by themselves. As lucky as I am, the changes are such that 30 yrs ago doing a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune would've paid 4x what I make now.
I wish I was smart enough to conceive a way out of this problem. The labor of writing simply doesn't pay as much as it used to and most writers only make money directly through their labor. If I'm not writing, I'm not making squat.
How do we get to the point where writing pays a living wage?
