Annie Dillard is famous. She won a Pulitzer and wrote a number of successful books. She still had to work a day job for 21 years to make ends meet. The fulltime long-form writer is a relatively rare thing unless they are being supported by someone else. Gotta be ambitious, but also gotta ground yourself in reality.
Margaret Mitchell worried about selling enough copies of Gone with the Wind to cover her advance. Finally, her husband reminded her not to worry. "We have more cousins that that in Georgia."
I want to sell lots of books but I don't think that going full time is really my goal. I want to make enough money to support my writing and pay the necessary fees for editing, book design etc. Some money for retirement would be good.
Many authors rely on advances for traditional publishing and don't make a lot of money. I would say 1% of all published authors actually make seven figures or more a year and this income mostly is from film rights being sold. That is fact. If you writing to make money you writing for the wrong reasons. Authors typically do NOT make a lot of money.
That’s why it’s stupid to traditionally publish. Your chances of getting accepted are ridiculously low no matter how well you write and you can make much more money in the long term if you self-publish.
I’ve been writing for years, but so far, I’ve only made 36 dollars from my writing. If I’m lucky, I might get a handful of purchases a year. Of course, at this point, I only sell print books. For various reasons, there are certain things that I don’t like about the ebook market. Contrary to popular assumption, I don’t think having a great cover has anything to do with getting sales. I’ve seen many books that have amazing covers, but still sell poorly. At the end of the day, most success comes down to luck.
Amazing covers don’t guarantee good sales but terrible covers can assuredly cripple sales. If your cover looks like you slapped it together in MS Paint in a half an hour, how many people do you think will even crack the cover to discover that you did, in fact, spend time and energy on your prose? In logical terms, professional polish is necessary but not sufficient to success.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity-Seneca; The more I practice, the luckier I get-Gary Player. Assuming your marketing is on point, then sales is in the hands of the readers. I've seen many fine writers sell poorly, and some of those who are only competent sell well. Nobody knows in advance how a book from an unestablished author will sell. Write because you have to, or you enjoy it-regard sales as a welcome bonus if they happen.
@@batman5224 Whose definition of lousy and whose definition of success are we using? That cover that is merely text on a background might still be the end-product of a graphic designer who knows what they are doing. Maybe you love Josh Kidby's zany art for Pratchett's Discworld while another thought it was too busy and preferred Scott McKowan's more minimalist work. They're still both professional and leagues above what an average author can do on their own. I guarantee you that unless you're targeting the 'its so bad its good' niche already, a book with a MS Paint cover will not sell as well as the exact same book with a professional cover. But hey, everyone's allowed to pursue what they think is best. If you feel that readers never judge a book by its cover and that success is mostly luck based, you keep doing you. Just don't be surprised when others disagree.
@@onenof10 I’m not saying that writers should not care about having good covers, but having a bad cover does not guarantee failure, whether I like it or not. There’s a huge difference between quality products and marketable products. I’ve seen too many low quality books sell well to say that having a good cover matters in financial terms. Of course, anyone with half a brain should know that low quality products, whether they be books, movies, or record albums, can sell tremendously well, which is why our culture is so dumbed-down. I also think there is such a thing as failure bias. If a book isn’t selling well, people will often try to look for reasons that the book isn’t selling, even though there are probably examples of successful books that made similar so-called mistakes. If a book is selling well, people are more likely to think that the cover is good, even if it isn’t. If a book isn’t selling well, people are more likely to think that the cover is bad, even if it isn’t. That is failure bias.
I spent 10 years and about 2-3k on 2 books I sell on Amazon, yet haven't profited from them. The books are good and well written but it's hard to get a readership. I think the sad results are because of the oversaturation of books being published online.
Thank you for the informative video. I have been writing for many years but have not made much money from it. Still, I push on. I will use all the informative steps included here to see if it works.
The whole publishing thing doesn’t seem to be necessary. I think I should be a journalist who meets Hideaki Anno in a party or anime con and shows him the novel I was working on and he decides to make an anime out of it instead of letting it rot in the dying business of publishing books.
@Reedsy- I'm looking to switch careers, I'm currently in the medical field. What are some good fields, within the industry of writing, that I can consider transitioning to?
I know I'm late and I dont know anything, but you could get into publishing. THere is editing, being a publicist, a copy editor, and more. If you want, you could probably intern at a place to see what you like.
I read somewhere that literary authors can get patronage teaching writing in universities. I doubt if it is a lot of money, but it beats starving in some garret. A lot of painters whose works sell for millions of dollars today made very little money during their lifetimes. Monet made a significant amount of money from his paintings, but most of his compadres made almost nothing off their paintings, and their works sell for millions of dollars today. In a way it is comforting to know that you might be remembered, but if you have your heart set on a villa in the countryside you probably won't get if.
Wouldn't there also be more high-earning indie authors because there are more indie authors than traditional authors? The graph seems like it's just looking at overall numbers, so if you had 50k indie authors where 10k were earning a living, that would look higher than 10k traditional authors where 5k were earning a living.
I also plan to disrupt the publishing industry by having a “Quest Author” character in the game. They write stories or novels and people choose to become a character in their tale. The best Quest Authors can become part of the writing team for the game.
@@tonimartin8547 a business book (manuel) for $995. Selling information products is what business owners will pay for if it solves a problem, saves time and or helps them earn more money.
Professionalism: this drives me crazy. My friend wrote three great southern gothic light-fantasy adventure/love stories. They'll never sell because her covers are crap. Folks. You spent a year or whatever writing your passion project. Spend the money on a great cover. Just do it. Don't have the money? Then your work is not ready for the market.
I very much enjoy the content in your videos, but I would like the pace to be slower. You speak rapidly and never pause, so I just can't keep up. It feels a little like reading a digital document with no breaks or paragraphs that I keep scrolling down. I hope I'm being more helpful than discouraging, because I'm looking forward to more of your videos.
@@cadencev5572 it's interesting to listen at 75%, a RUclips default. The jump cuts become very obvious and seem to highlight where pauses were, though. I'll use the slower speed in the future. Thanks for the suggestion.
@@TedPartrick Thanks for the suggestion. She's also really fast for me, but her videos are enjoyable. I use 85%. 75% is a little too slow (loses some of her personality going that slow).
I am a Kurdish American and have worked as a Kurdish English translator and cultural advisor for the U.S. Military in Iraqi Kurdistan for more than ten years. I have finished writing a novel based on my experience with the U.S military in Iraqi Kurdistan and my life under Saddam Hussein's authoritarian regime. An editor is working on my manuscript, which will soon be finished. I need your advice regarding the publishing. Do you recommend self-publishing or traditional? I have good funds for advertising if I go with self-publishing. But few people recommend the traditional way. In 2004, I started working as a linguist with U.S. Military in my hometown, Kirkuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and then in 2008, I moved to The United States. In 2015, I became a U.S. citizen, and then I returned to Iraq again as a linguist and cultural advisor with the U.S. Military to fight against ISIS in Iraq. There is a good plot in the story. There are love, persecution, history, genocide, fighting against terrorists, and more in my story. Some of the stories are real, but the rest is fiction based on actual political events and situation.
That sounds like an interesting life. I would go try traditional route first. Research publication companies that publish that kind of work. I would go to a book store and look for non-fiction war novels or similar works and see who publish those books and send the manuscript to them when finished. I’d go to their website and see how to send it to them. Good luck!
Indie is short for independent, authors who sell their books without going through traditional publishing houses. The big five are the five largest publishers located in New York that own the controlling share of the print publishing market. As for which is better, there isn’t any one size fits all answer. Is it better to own your own company or be an employee with a guaranteed salary? For some the answer will be independence and all the higher risk and higher rewards, for others the reliability of the well oiled machine is ideal. Both are valid and both can work wonderfully or crash and burn around your hopes and dreams. Neither is easy.
I second everything Shane said, with the quick addition that it also depends on how much money you have available to you. It costs around $3-5000 to put out one self published book, and most of the time you're expected to put out more than one book a year. Shaelin was right when she said you can't skimp on certain things if you want to compete, and good editing + marketing is far from cheap.
@@Gaywatch Thanks, good to know the potential cost range. I'm far from the publishing point but I like to know, or at least have an idea, of what's ahead. Would keeping away from Amazon be a good move? From the looks of the chart in the video, it didn't seem to perform so well.
@@watchthewindblowby There's indi authors that make 6 figures or more just on Amazon by being in KU. The general options for indi's are KU or Wide. KU (kindle unlimited) is Amazon's exclusivity programme. Wide means Amazon non-exclusive, Apple books, Kobo, B&N, GogglePlay, Smashwords etc.
You have to climb your way to the top. Success doesn't happen on accident. Get chummy with publishers and executives and don't be afraid to put your own interests first.
LOL. Pretty much every author you've ever heard of in the history of publishing was or is making money from it. Shakespeare, Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle... If Doyle wasn't making any money from writing, he would've gone back to his medical practice and we'd never have Sherlock Holmes. If Steven King hadn't sold his first novel, he'd now be waiting tables somewhere instead of writing. They might not all have gotten filthy rich from writing, because writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but all of the successful authors are successful precisely because they were able to write full time and not on their lunch break.
Like so many things, the answer is: IT DEPENDS
Annie Dillard is famous. She won a Pulitzer and wrote a number of successful books.
She still had to work a day job for 21 years to make ends meet.
The fulltime long-form writer is a relatively rare thing unless they are being supported by someone else.
Gotta be ambitious, but also gotta ground yourself in reality.
Margaret Mitchell worried about selling enough copies of Gone with the Wind to cover her advance. Finally, her husband reminded her not to worry. "We have more cousins that that in Georgia."
I want to sell lots of books but I don't think that going full time is really my goal. I want to make enough money to support my writing and pay the necessary fees for editing, book design etc. Some money for retirement would be good.
Very informative. I'm actually surprised about self pub. I always thought you had to have a big following to make any money that way
Many authors rely on advances for traditional publishing and don't make a lot of money. I would say 1% of all published authors actually make seven figures or more a year and this income mostly is from film rights being sold. That is fact. If you writing to make money you writing for the wrong reasons. Authors typically do NOT make a lot of money.
That’s why it’s stupid to traditionally publish. Your chances of getting accepted are ridiculously low no matter how well you write and you can make much more money in the long term if you self-publish.
I'm glad you are talking about this! I have friends who write full time.
What jobs do they have? Are they authors, freelance writers, novelists?
Keep writing, keep publishing.
I’ve been writing for years, but so far, I’ve only made 36 dollars from my writing. If I’m lucky, I might get a handful of purchases a year. Of course, at this point, I only sell print books. For various reasons, there are certain things that I don’t like about the ebook market. Contrary to popular assumption, I don’t think having a great cover has anything to do with getting sales. I’ve seen many books that have amazing covers, but still sell poorly. At the end of the day, most success comes down to luck.
Amazing covers don’t guarantee good sales but terrible covers can assuredly cripple sales. If your cover looks like you slapped it together in MS Paint in a half an hour, how many people do you think will even crack the cover to discover that you did, in fact, spend time and energy on your prose?
In logical terms, professional polish is necessary but not sufficient to success.
@@onenof10 I’ve seen plenty of books with lousy covers become successful. In fact, it’s quite common.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity-Seneca;
The more I practice, the luckier I get-Gary Player.
Assuming your marketing is on point, then sales is in the hands of the readers. I've seen many fine writers sell poorly, and some of those who are only competent sell well. Nobody knows in advance how a book from an unestablished author will sell.
Write because you have to, or you enjoy it-regard sales as a welcome bonus if they happen.
@@batman5224 Whose definition of lousy and whose definition of success are we using? That cover that is merely text on a background might still be the end-product of a graphic designer who knows what they are doing. Maybe you love Josh Kidby's zany art for Pratchett's Discworld while another thought it was too busy and preferred Scott McKowan's more minimalist work. They're still both professional and leagues above what an average author can do on their own. I guarantee you that unless you're targeting the 'its so bad its good' niche already, a book with a MS Paint cover will not sell as well as the exact same book with a professional cover.
But hey, everyone's allowed to pursue what they think is best. If you feel that readers never judge a book by its cover and that success is mostly luck based, you keep doing you. Just don't be surprised when others disagree.
@@onenof10 I’m not saying that writers should not care about having good covers, but having a bad cover does not guarantee failure, whether I like it or not. There’s a huge difference between quality products and marketable products. I’ve seen too many low quality books sell well to say that having a good cover matters in financial terms. Of course, anyone with half a brain should know that low quality products, whether they be books, movies, or record albums, can sell tremendously well, which is why our culture is so dumbed-down. I also think there is such a thing as failure bias. If a book isn’t selling well, people will often try to look for reasons that the book isn’t selling, even though there are probably examples of successful books that made similar so-called mistakes. If a book is selling well, people are more likely to think that the cover is good, even if it isn’t. If a book isn’t selling well, people are more likely to think that the cover is bad, even if it isn’t. That is failure bias.
Are there job opportunities at Reedsy?? I would loveee to work with such an amazing team🤩
Excellent as always and practical!
I spent 10 years and about 2-3k on 2 books I sell on Amazon, yet haven't profited from them. The books are good and well written but it's hard to get a readership. I think the sad results are because of the oversaturation of books being published online.
What are your books? Consider me interested. 🙂
@@authorjgamber search "atomic winter"
Thank you for the informative video. I have been writing for many years but have not made much money from it. Still, I push on. I will use all the informative steps included here to see if it works.
The whole publishing thing doesn’t seem to be necessary. I think I should be a journalist who meets Hideaki Anno in a party or anime con and shows him the novel I was working on and he decides to make an anime out of it instead of letting it rot in the dying business of publishing books.
@Reedsy- I'm looking to switch careers, I'm currently in the medical field. What are some good fields, within the industry of writing, that I can consider transitioning to?
I know I'm late and I dont know anything, but you could get into publishing. THere is editing, being a publicist, a copy editor, and more. If you want, you could probably intern at a place to see what you like.
Abbie Emmons The IT people are starting to get restless. Please negotiate with them.
Would you say working for company that does youtube videos about writing is a good way to supplement your income while trying to get published?
I always wanted to be a author but my sister said that I would be Brock and now I am scared
I read somewhere that literary authors can get patronage teaching writing in universities. I doubt if it is a lot of money, but it beats starving in some garret. A lot of painters whose works sell for millions of dollars today made very little money during their lifetimes. Monet made a significant amount of money from his paintings, but most of his compadres made almost nothing off their paintings, and their works sell for millions of dollars today. In a way it is comforting to know that you might be remembered, but if you have your heart set on a villa in the countryside you probably won't get if.
Never give up...keep writing.
Wouldn't there also be more high-earning indie authors because there are more indie authors than traditional authors? The graph seems like it's just looking at overall numbers, so if you had 50k indie authors where 10k were earning a living, that would look higher than 10k traditional authors where 5k were earning a living.
It’s about like asking how do actors or singers make
Conan is to be replaced by Stephen Fry.
I'm currently on 20 quid.... after several years.....
I also plan to disrupt the publishing industry by having a “Quest Author” character in the game. They write stories or novels and people choose to become a character in their tale. The best Quest Authors can become part of the writing team for the game.
I turned one of my books into manual and sold it at $1,000 a copy many times over. You've got to look at your product with a lateral mindset.
please elaborate i don't understand
Did you sell a $1k worth of books or a book for $1,000?
@@tonimartin8547 a business book (manuel) for $995. Selling information products is what business owners will pay for if it solves a problem, saves time and or helps them earn more money.
Hello Reedsy. Thank you for all you do. ❤️
Professionalism: this drives me crazy. My friend wrote three great southern gothic light-fantasy adventure/love stories.
They'll never sell because her covers are crap.
Folks. You spent a year or whatever writing your passion project. Spend the money on a great cover. Just do it. Don't have the money? Then your work is not ready for the market.
Hi
😠😤😡🤬 AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH
I'm raging. Alot.
@@sumayyahkhan8897 Rage, rage against thr Dying of the Light
@@rev6215 next time I WILL beat you.
Hi sumayyah .
@@kaveesha2727 hey
“I think it definitely depends on the genre .”
I very much enjoy the content in your videos, but I would like the pace to be slower. You speak rapidly and never pause, so I just can't keep up. It feels a little like reading a digital document with no breaks or paragraphs that I keep scrolling down. I hope I'm being more helpful than discouraging, because I'm looking forward to more of your videos.
I don't mind how fast she speaks actually. You could always make the playback speed a little slower
@@cadencev5572 it's interesting to listen at 75%, a RUclips default. The jump cuts become very obvious and seem to highlight where pauses were, though. I'll use the slower speed in the future. Thanks for the suggestion.
@@TedPartrick Thanks for the suggestion. She's also really fast for me, but her videos are enjoyable. I use 85%. 75% is a little too slow (loses some of her personality going that slow).
I am a Kurdish American and have worked as a Kurdish English translator and cultural advisor for the U.S. Military in Iraqi Kurdistan for more than ten years. I have finished writing a novel based on my experience with the U.S military in Iraqi Kurdistan and my life under Saddam Hussein's authoritarian regime.
An editor is working on my manuscript, which will soon be finished.
I need your advice regarding the publishing. Do you recommend self-publishing or traditional?
I have good funds for advertising if I go with self-publishing. But few people recommend the traditional way.
In 2004, I started working as a linguist with U.S. Military in my hometown, Kirkuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and then in 2008, I moved to The United States. In 2015, I became a U.S. citizen, and then I returned to Iraq again as a linguist and cultural advisor with the U.S. Military to fight against ISIS in Iraq. There is a good plot in the story. There are love, persecution, history, genocide, fighting against terrorists, and more in my story. Some of the stories are real, but the rest is fiction based on actual political events and situation.
That sounds like an interesting life.
I would go try traditional route first.
Research publication companies that publish that kind of work.
I would go to a book store and look for non-fiction war novels or similar works and see who publish those books and send the manuscript to them when finished. I’d go to their website and see how to send it to them.
Good luck!
@@Chronic_Gainz
Thank you very much
Wait, you can make money with that gig?
Loving the background music
What is indie vs big 5? What would the best option be?
Indie is short for independent, authors who sell their books without going through traditional publishing houses. The big five are the five largest publishers located in New York that own the controlling share of the print publishing market.
As for which is better, there isn’t any one size fits all answer. Is it better to own your own company or be an employee with a guaranteed salary? For some the answer will be independence and all the higher risk and higher rewards, for others the reliability of the well oiled machine is ideal.
Both are valid and both can work wonderfully or crash and burn around your hopes and dreams.
Neither is easy.
@@onenof10 Thanks for the info!
I second everything Shane said, with the quick addition that it also depends on how much money you have available to you. It costs around $3-5000 to put out one self published book, and most of the time you're expected to put out more than one book a year. Shaelin was right when she said you can't skimp on certain things if you want to compete, and good editing + marketing is far from cheap.
@@Gaywatch Thanks, good to know the potential cost range. I'm far from the publishing point but I like to know, or at least have an idea, of what's ahead. Would keeping away from Amazon be a good move? From the looks of the chart in the video, it didn't seem to perform so well.
@@watchthewindblowby There's indi authors that make 6 figures or more just on Amazon by being in KU. The general options for indi's are KU or Wide. KU (kindle unlimited) is Amazon's exclusivity programme. Wide means Amazon non-exclusive, Apple books, Kobo, B&N, GogglePlay, Smashwords etc.
How much ??? 🤭❓Not Much !! 🧡⭐🧡
Very useful, thanks.
Hello. Shaelin 🌎
Thanks 🌎
You have to climb your way to the top. Success doesn't happen on accident. Get chummy with publishers and executives and don't be afraid to put your own interests first.
Really you look cute
Authors make...Zero. Zilch. Nada. Become a banker if you want to make money.
You do know that author James Patterson made over $80million dollars in 2020 alone, right...?
What...
I'm both lol
LOL. Pretty much every author you've ever heard of in the history of publishing was or is making money from it. Shakespeare, Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle... If Doyle wasn't making any money from writing, he would've gone back to his medical practice and we'd never have Sherlock Holmes. If Steven King hadn't sold his first novel, he'd now be waiting tables somewhere instead of writing. They might not all have gotten filthy rich from writing, because writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but all of the successful authors are successful precisely because they were able to write full time and not on their lunch break.
Isn't J.K Rowling a billionaire.
E.L James (50 shades of Grey) $150 millions
Hell even wattpad has created a couple millionaire teen authors