Making a living from writing books is hard.
1. When you sell a book to a publisher, you get an advance on royalties (but this usually requires you to have written the book first, so you're writing w/o income for months/years)
1. When you sell a book to a publisher, you get an advance on royalties (but this usually requires you to have written the book first, so you're writing w/o income for months/years)
2. the advance is usually split--1/3 on signing the contract, 1/3 on delivery of final manuscript (even if you've already spent years writing it, there will still be months/years of editing), 1/3 on publication
3. Most advances aren't enough to live on, especially if you aren't just supporting yourself.
4. A large portion of advances never earn out, so the advance is the only money you'll ever see.
5. If you do earn out your advance and start receiving royalties, those only come twice a year and you never know how much it will be till you get it.
6. You can't depend on living on royalties. They're unreliable. The royalties on one book might pay for several months of bills, and then a year later it won't even cover a month of therapy for one of my kids
7. Since you can't depend on royalties to pay bills, you need to be constantly writing something new so you can live on the advance for the next book. It's not easy to "BE CREATIVE RIGHT NOW ON COMMAND, GOLDARNIT!"
8. And then of course as a self-employed person, you get no healthcare, benefits, sick days, and you pay 15%+ higher taxes, also 15% to an agent.
9. Children's authors also earn less than any others (royalties are calculated by a percentage of the cover price, but kids books sell for less and children's authors percentages are lower) so many kid lit authors supplement income with speaking engagements
10. Speaking engagements take away from writing time, so the more paid assemblies and workshops and conferences you attend, the fewer books you write, the longer you wait till you get that next advance
11. This is not to discourage anyone. This is not to complain. This is just the reality of the business. I think it's important to understand. Especially as I constantly run into people who believe that writers are rich (and use that to justify piracy)
12. I was able to be a full time writer and mom for years before we could live on what I made because I had a spouse who worked. Many writers also hold down day jobs.
13. I had I think 18 books in print before our family could start to live off the book income alone. I never thought we'd get here and feel incredibly lucky to do what I love for a living.
14. But it's still hard. But I love it. But it's hard. But I love it so so so much and I don't want to do anything else. But also it's hard.
