Recently a friend and reader shared some of the things she’s considering about her writing life, particularly the crossroads at which she sits as she decides whether to keep trying to make a living from writing or find some other sort of work to provide for her family. I so related to this quandary, as do most of the writers I know. Financial stability is not a given, especially if we are trying to make our living from selling books.
But often we hear about these writers who sell $10,000 of books in a month or clear a $1 million dollars in book sales a year. Those figures are so inspiring, and I appreciate the transparency of people like Mark Dawson who share these figures honestly – with expenses laid out, too. If, however, all we hear is these outlying figures, especially when the amount of spending required to reach that amount isn’t noted, we can begin to not only have unrealistic expectations of what we can earn from writing books but also consider ourselves failures when our part-time, low-budget efforts (and most of us have limited hours and funds to give to our books) don’t produce wildly lucrative results.
The truth is that most authors don’t make their full-time living off of selling books. Most of us do other things to meet our budgets.
Today, then, I’m sharing my income break-out percentages so you see how much I make from book sales, how much from coaching and editing, and how much from a small handful of other income streams (like affiliate sales, etc.) Plus, I’ll tell you the kind of money I spend to achieve those numbers.
My 2019 Income
Last year, I netted about 1/2 of what the U.S. National Median income was for the year, so combined with my husband’s full-time salary, we sit just right squarely in the middle class, which is a great privilege and a gift, but let’s just say we aren’t planning our early retirement to a the island of Mauritius. And we could not live on my salary alone, much less on my book sales, as you’ll see.
Plus, that full-time gig of my husband’s, it’s the way we have low-cost health insurance, which is not really something we could afford for a family of three on my salary. (Email me if you’d like to share a lament the state of the U.S. health-care system.)
Still, I was pleased to see that there’s been a strong upward trend in my income as a writer/editor since I made this slide show back in 2014.
Alright, so here’s the breakdown from 2019.
Gross Income
- $52,599 in editing/coaching
- $2,486 in book sales
- $2002 in affiliate sales, speaking honorariums, and other miscellany.
Thus, the breakdown is that I make
- 92.13% of my income from editing/coaching
- 4.35% from book sales
- 3.5% from affiliates, speaking, and various other things.
Clearly, I need to not quit my day job, at least not yet. My income from book sales has climbed precipitously even in the first two months of 2020 because I started writing to market. Even so, I don’t see my book sales outpacing my editing income anytime soon.
Gross Expense
In total, I spent just under $20,000 in expenses. The expenses were quite high last year because of that decision to write to market and the upfront costs (editing, cover design, etc) associated with that work. But those figures also include the cost of this website, email marketing services, my amazing virtual assistant (who makes it possible for me to work and also take care of our toddler, thus avoiding day care expenses.*), and a whopping $3,357 in fees to process credit cards. GUH!!!
Plus, since I’m self-employed, I put aside 25% of what I make to cover income taxes. I also put aside 5% of what I make toward our retirement since I don’t have an employer 401K and don’t pay into Social Security (my husband contributes as does his employer – again, so grateful for his job). I put aside another 5% for our son’s educational expenses since they will hit about the same time as our retirement does (one of the challenges of becoming parents in our 40s). So in the end, we spend only about 65% of what I gross. In dollars, that was $24,609 last year. A huge help for our expenses but not Viper-buying money . . . not yet.
The Bottom Line
The truth is that it is very, very difficult for anyone to become very wealthy from publishing books. People do it, of course, and I’m truly thrilled when they do. But those folks are rare, the unicorns of our industry. Most of us have day jobs to pay the bills. That’s just the short and long of it.
And if, like me, you indie publish, then you need to have some capital to lay out to begin. You can start with a small budget, absolutely, but if you want to bring in big income from books, you need to do big advertising, especially now as the market gets more and more full of books competing for readers. (Be wise with ads, though. You can lose a lot of money very quickly through advertising.) The adage about spending money to make money definitely applies here.
For my friend who is weighing out the costs of writing books verses getting a job with a steady paycheck, I have no specific advice. Each of us must choose the best course for our lives, but I do hope these figures give you what I think – but can’t confirm since dollar figures are so scarce in our industry – is a pretty typical author’s income. Maybe they’re a little help as you decide.
Now, please, what questions can I answer? I won’t go into more details about the figures because I do want some privacy around my family’s finances, but I’m happy to talk about what I spend my money on, what has worked for me in terms of selling books, etc. I’d love to chat.
*Note – our son’s grandparents graciously stay with Milo three afternoons a week so I can work. This arrangement is the only way I’ve been able to keep working as I have, and I am so grateful to them.
Because of my recent decision to rein in my social media use in a major way, I moved the writing community I coordinate over to a new, focused space that is all our own. There, we share weekly goals for our writing lives, we ask questions about resources or quandaries, we encourage one another, and we commiserate together when the writing life is hard. Plus, each Monday, I write a note just for the members of that community and inspired by our conversations there.
If you’d like to join us, we’d love to have you. Membership is $2.99 a month, but if that’s a financial hardship for you, please let me know. I have one scholarship available from a generous member.
You can get all the details about the community and join us here.
We’d love to see you there.