stessier wrote: ↑Thu Feb 14, 2019 5:00 pm
My daughter is 12 and wants to be an author, but the statistics suggest she needs a permanent backup career as well (meaning she's never going to be able to only write).
Back when dead-tree books were still a thing, I briefly considered going into writing when pondering what to waste my college years on. I was easily discouraged by a published ranking of vocations by average salary. IIRC, Chemical Engineering was the shit, commanding 6 figures even in the late '70's. Dead last was writer, with an average salary only half of minimum wage.
Charging head long in to Genetics, I didn't see the brick wall that knocked me out until it was too late (organic chemistry). So I slid back into something I had greater interest in (history) along with something I was still good at (writing) and then, lo and behold, a mere decade later I made my first nickel writing!
Now, there is money to be made in writing if you aren't also chasing fame. At my peak, I was averaging about $50 per hour doing part-time writing for various things ranging from magazines to websites (and including some editing work). Across several years I was making enough to cover my $500 car payment. Then the .com crash happened, and all of my clients went tits-up (except for one notable exception who would hire me to ghost write things he was probably making bank on). Now, I came by those clients through incidental networking and when the network broke, there was no more work finding me. In the late 90's I picked up a copy of Writer's Market (a directory of publications, contacts, and a wealth of information about the business of being a writer). One of the articles in the book advised taking a 70/30 split in time spent marketing vs. writing. Guess which was the 70%.
If I had me a pimp, I'd still probably be doing it in some capacity but I don't like being a salesman. While writing about things that interest you can be fun; writing something compelling about a subject you care little about can be a real slog. It's nice that Gryndyl is able to eke out a living for now - but most novelists do have a day job these days. To become a mainstay on the best seller's list is akin to being a rock star or sports great. Many of the more ubiquitous writers don't even do the heavy lifting anymore - they do editing for consistency and work on building the brand (see Patterson, James and Cussler, Clive for examples).
One day when I was probably at peak production as a writer, I mused to one of my editors that if I applied myself to it full time and was able to triple the number of clients, I could probably ditch my day job. She immediately bitch slapped me back into reality and screamed "DON'T DO IT!"
