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It would be interesting to have a timeseries plot of this sort of information. Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? Presumably there was some

It would be interesting to have a timeseries plot of this sort of information. Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? Presumably there was some point at which the ease of making a living as an author peaked. This article suggests that time is in the past, but how far in the past? Has the absolute number of people who can make it as an author decreased, or just the relative fraction of the human population? So many questions. I do also think that the expectation/standard of a $100k/year salary is a bit high. That's almost double the US median household income, for a job that can be done (some would argue is best done) from a house in the woods. I also know that some authors are turning to Patreon. N.K. Jemisen famously started a Patreon that allowed her to quit her job and begin writing full-time. I personally have donated >$100 directly to favorite midlist authors who have made a big impact on my reading life. FWIW, I used to read more, but I still buy at least three or four full-priced books a year.

andi999 5y ago
If you have a scalable product there is usually no middle ground. Either you are getting rich or just getting by, or even not getting by (last one the most likely one)
- Siira 5y ago
  Isn’t software a big exception to this?
  - andi999 5y ago
    Is it? Can you elaborate? I think if you have a SaaS with happy 100 customers paying 10$ each per month it is easier to scale up to 10k customers than if you only have 2 customers to get to 200.
  - watwut 5y ago
    No. Software follow the same pattern.
  - muzani 5y ago
    Well you have this at roughly $2000 total: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sarasarasa.lifeup https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sarasarasa... And this at almost a million dollars: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.modelmakertools.simplemindpro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.modelmaker... I'm not sure if these are outliers, and my "random" sampling is just picking out highly visible apps. But I've made good money off an app built in a month, and I've made relatively little from a book written in 3 months. Software has a lot more variety. You can make say, a communist themed productivity app vs a forest themed one and these will appeal to different people.
  - benibela 5y ago
    Software is the worst. After 15 years of open source development, I have basically earned nothing
salamandersauce 5y ago
Yes. Needs comparison to past years to be useful. Would also be helpful to compare books that came out in past year or few years to see how their sales trends. We also need to know what those books that are tracked are. Are they just in print titles? Or does it count 60 year old used biology textbooks for sale on Amazon no one wants? Or dated romance novels long past their prime? Because if those are included I'm not surprised they are struggling to sell 1000 copies. Even new books in niche academic fields can struggle to sell 1000 copies as the audience is so small.
- ellegriffin 5y ago
  I did mention Alexandre Dumas as a case study in a previous article. Here's a snippet: "But there used to be another way. When Alexandre Dumas debuted The Count of Monte Cristo it was published as a feuilleton—a portion of the weekly newspaper devoted to fiction. From August 1844 to January 1846 his chapters were published in 18 installments for The Journal des Débats, a newspaper that went out to 9,000 to 10,000 paying subscribers in France—and readers were rapt by it. In the forward to a 2004 translation of the book, the writer Luc Sante wrote: “The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled… is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else.” It was basically “Game of Thrones.” Readers could not wait to get their hands on the next chapter and that bode very well for the writer who was not only paid by the newspaper in real-time for his work (by the word), but also grew the popularity of his work over the entirety of the time it was being published. “The ‘Presse’ pays nearly 300 francs per day for feuilletons to Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, De Balzac, Frederic Soulé, Theophile Gautier, and Jules Sandeau,” Littell’s Little Age, Volume 10 wrote in 1846. “But what will the result be in 1848? That each of these personnages will have made from 32,000 to 64,000 francs per annum for two or three years for writing profitable trash of the color of the foulest mud in Paris?” That “profitable trash” earned those writers an annual salary of between $202,107 to $404,213 in today’s dollars—and the obvious disdain of that Littell writer who, even then preferred the merits of a bound and published book. The same volume goes on to say that Dumas earned about 10,000 francs ($65,743 today) per installment when he was poached from The Presse by The Constitutionnel in 1845." https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth
ghaff 5y ago
>Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? My assumption is almost certainly yes--provided you made it through the big publisher gatekeepers. (And were able to parlay that into shelf space at the store.) - People probably read more books. There were fewer other demands on attention, whether YouTube, social media, online content generally, etc. I certainly read books far less than I used to. - There was less competition once you got through the aforementioned gatekeepers. - There was less discounting. Books used to be sold at list price. And, subsequently, maybe at a small discount in some places. - Publishers often provided support with marketing activities.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  >People probably read more books. There were fewer other demands on attention, whether YouTube, social media, online content generally, etc. I certainly read books far less than I used to. I'd imagine the number of books sold per year is strictly increasing.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    This suggests otherwise. (Although this is obviously not a complete set of data. I'd actually probably have expected a bigger falloff but maybe ease of acquisition leads to more people buying books they don't end up reading.) https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publishing https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publish...
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      I suppose the assumption is predicated on a rising population. Also you'd think last year might have led to more people reading books.
  - jbay808 5y ago
    If it's increasing because of a growing number of readers, then that's a winner take all scenario where Harry Potter sells more and more copies as each new reader hasn't read it yet. If it's growing because of one extremely voracious reader buying up every book they can get their hands on, that's a scenario that favours more obscure authors.
cafard 5y ago
Recently in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, I noticed the passage He asked me whether he had mentioned, in any of the papers of the Rambler, the description in Virgil of the entrance into Hell, with an application to the press; 'for,' said he, 'I do not much remember them'. I told him, 'No.' Upon which he repeated it: Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisque in faucibus orci, Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus, Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas, Terribiles visu formae; Lethumque, Laborque. [Footnote: Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell; And pale diseases, and repining age; Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage; Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep, Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep. DRYDEN.] 'Now,' said he, 'almost all these apply exactly to an authour; all these are the concomitants of a printing-house.' I proposed to him to dictate an essay on it, and offered to write it. He said, he would not do it then, but perhaps would write one at some future period. (entry of Thursday, 14th October)
- defen 5y ago
  Did he ever write it, or is this the Fermat's Last Theorem of authorial metacommentary?
  - cafard 5y ago
    The latter, I suspect. I don't remember any note to it in R.W. Chapman's edition.
KittenInABox 5y ago
I know offhandedly that at one point it was possible to live on one's short fiction but now that's been entirely squeezed out. (Unless you're Ted Chiang.)
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  That is sad. :( In happier news, I wonder if you can look at things in terms of "creators of entertainment" rather than just authors and get a happier picture. Like, for example, let's just consider authors and video game creators. Let's suppose that in the fifties, before video games, there were, say, 100,000 full-time fiction authors in the US. (That number sounds awfully high to me, but maybe.) Today, according to this article, there can only be at most about 7,000 full time fiction authors in the US. But according to this page[1], there are 260,000 people working in the videogaming industry. So if we only consider these two industries, that's 160,000 more people getting paid full time wages to create entertainment. That's sad if you want to be an author, but if you're concerned about the overall creation mix of society, then maybe it's not so sad. [1]: https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/video-games-united-states/ https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/vid...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    People “working in the videogaming industry” aren’t comparable to “fiction authors” but to “people working in the slice of the publishing industry involved in publishing fiction”. And the slice of the videogaming industry that is analogous to authors is probably a vastly smaller proportion than of print fiction publishing because there is so much more non-authorial stuff to do.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      That's a good point! From what I can find about 750k people are working in the publishing industry overall. It's hard to find statistics just for fiction publishing. I have to admit I'm a little surprised. I would have thought by now the videogame industry would be bigger than books, but maybe it's not.
blululu 5y ago
100k is not that unreasonable of an expectation as the necessary base for a freelancer. Keep in mind that you will need to cover additional taxes that your employer would normally cover, and you will need to plan on variability so you need more cushion than a salaried employee. Add in the fact that an author would need to be in the top 10% of a competitive field and you need to start considering the opportunity cost of not getting an office job.
- ghaff 5y ago
  And no benefits, including insurance. That $100K for a fairly to very successful author starts to look a lot like a pretty middling $60K or so income in an office job.
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    You two make excellent points. Although the author seems greedy for wanting a 100k salary, that 100k is going to feel closer to 50k for reasons outside of their control.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      To be clear, I never said that it was greedy to want a $100k salary. It's a perfectly rational and ordinary thing to want. I wondered about how reasonable to was to expect to attain that level of financial success in writing.
      - ellegriffin 5y ago
        Well reasonable is a whole other thing. And I'm definitely not being reasonable! :)
        asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        "Never tell me the odds?" :) I wish you the very best of luck.
Vvector 5y ago
> I do also think that the expectation/standard of a $100k/year salary is a bit high. Agreed. Most writers do it because they love writing, not because they expect $100k/year. The money comes after the success. I wish her luck
- ellegriffin 5y ago
  I would call it more of a hope than an expectation. Really what I'm trying to figure out is if it's possible to monetize a niche audience (with fiction content) and make a living from it. I guess we'll find out... And thanks for the luck!
- bambax 5y ago
  > Most writers do it because they love writing The funny thing about writing is that writers mostly hate writing. Writers like being writers. They also like having written books. But the process, they despise. This is very different from other arts. Musicians enjoy playing music a lot. Performers, in general, love to perform. Even painters, I think, like to paint. Not writers.
kevinmchugh 5y ago
Vonnegut I remember writing somewhere that radio and especially TV had killed the market for short stories in magazines, which were a great way for authors to get started. Here's some other things he said on making a living as a writer: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/vonnegut-writing-iowa-workshop/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/vonnegut-writing-i... Note that he got paid $750 for his first short story in 1949! I don't know how many places are paying first time authors that much today, and then you remember to calculate inflation.
- iib 5y ago
  I assume even in radio and TV, not all segments are created equal. Maybe live, ad-libbed shows had a more detrimental effect, in the sense that at least scripted shows employ more writers? Also, would it not make sense to look at writing even from a more indirect point? For example, millions of people enjoyed the creativity of the /Friends/ writers, without actually reading a single word. Should they be counted as successful as a book writer with millions of readers?
- padobson 5y ago
  750 dollars in 1949 is about $9,000 in 2021. Vonnegut had to convince at least two gatekeepers: his own agent and the editor at Colliers. I spent a large chunk of time a few years back looking into the questions OP is asking, and the ultimate truth I came to is this: whether you're self publishing or going the traditional route, you're going to need some established gatekeepers to support you if you're going to make it. In 1949, those gatekeepers were traditional publishers. In 2021, we still have traditional publishers, but we also have content curation algorithms, social media influencers, podcast hosts, and platforms like Substack and Patreon. If you can get any of them to put resources into promoting you, you'll have a real opportunity of making it - that is, if what you're offering is any good. If you can't or don't want to get the attention of those gatekeepers, it doesn't matter how good your content is, no one will ever find you.
  - pie420 5y ago
    Yep, in almost every industry it was always been 50% how good you are and 50% who you know. Over time, who you need to know to be successful has changed, and new artists need to adapt, as they always have. Getting an audience is easier than ever in history. That is amazing for hobbyists who just want some readers and recognition, and not great for those who want to earn a living while writing.
michaelt 5y ago
> Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? I suspect there is now a middle ground that didn't exist before: In the 1970s you were either selling >10,000 copies, or you weren't a published author. 'Self-publishing' had a reputation as a scam to extract money from naive would-be authors. (I'm not sure what the academic book market was like at the time) It's only with the rise of ebooks and print-on-demand that niche, low-selling authors have become a thing.
- allturtles 5y ago
  I don't think this is true. Niche and vanity presses have existed for a long time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press#History) Academic presses are also mostly very low volume. But academics don't expect to make a living from selling books (at least not directly - books help to establish reputations which can help you in the academic job market).
  - michaelt 5y ago
    Vanity presses have indeed existed for a long time, but 50 years ago they were widely seen as a scam, rather than a realistic route to a writing career. Vanity publishers would tell every author their work had great sales potential, then charge them $2000 for $500 worth of editing, printing and marketing - so authors would not only fail to make money, they would actually make a large loss.
    - allturtles 5y ago
      I don't think that's a huge difference. It will still cost you money to get your Word doc into publishable shape (cover and interior design, editing, etc.) And you're still unlikely to make a significant profit on that upfront cost as a self-published author of PoD or eBooks. As to whether either form of self-publishing 'scam' or not, that depends on the expectations of the author. I think it's always been common to publish just to be published with no expectation of making money, hence the 'vanity'. But I have no data to back that up.
majormajor 5y ago
100k isn't what it used to be. I often suspect we haven't noticed the inflationary effects on this as a "high" salary as much as we otherwise would because of the psychological effect of the change from five to six figures. Yeah, the median salary is low, but that's been well-covered elsewhere about how it hasn't risen in line with costs or upper-percentile income - so think of this as just another example of "here's a field where you can't make a comfortable income anymore."
munificent 5y ago
> Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? One of the dominant subjective experiences of living today is the sensation that any possible amazing kind of life is right there and it is only up to us to reach out to pluck it. You go on Instagram and see people living blissful lives of travel in gorgeous locales while talking about how affordable it is. That random dude who wrote a series of posts on some story-telling Reddit ends up getting it optioned by Hollywood and is now a major screenwriter. The sea shanty Tik-Tok'er is a major label recording artist. Our culture's positive values of egalitarianism and opportunity say that whatever you want your life to be can be, if only you work hard enough to get it. The dark side of this is that many of us won't. And, in particular, in many areas, the total number of brass rings is relatively fixed and we can't all get them. A hundred years ago, most people didn't even think of becoming an author. It was a rarefied activity done by people who went to college and moved to New York City. For more, authors felt like an Other. It's not that their personal dreams of authorship were crushed by the lack of opportunity, it's like they never thought to dream it in the first place, any more than people dream of being howler monkeys or velour sofas. But today, media is more than happy to show us all possible dreams. Our social media aggregators filter out all of the lives you're likely to lead and show you only the best ones. So I think today many many more people consider and try to become authors than ever before. But the total amount of time spent reading isn't growing enough to accommodate that. While some will find success (for however they choose to define that), the end result is probably a much greater number of dreams thwarted than attained. I love this TED talk by Alain de Botton on success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY He says: "It is probably as unlikely nowadays that you would become as rich and famous as Bill Gates as it was unlikely in the 17th century that you would exceed to the ranks of the French aristocracy. But the point is it doesn't feel that way. It's made to feel by the media and other outlets that if you've got energy, a few bright ideas about technology, a garage, you too could start a major thing."
- gurkendoktor 5y ago
  Great comment! > A hundred years ago, most people didn't even think of becoming an author. The following is a bit tangential, but I keep thinking about it: I was watching this video on the Barnum effect recently, which basically says that people are likely to believe in the accuracy of vague descriptions of their personality (think horoscopes; "Libras need security"). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2HoscBLIw&t=4m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2HoscBLIw&t=4m23s The super-vague personality assessment, which was tailored to describe as many people as possible, included the wish for writing a novel (at 4m23s). That's how common this desire is/was? I wonder if the modern version of it would say "you have considered opening up on YouTube".
bun_at_work 5y ago
There's an interesting book [1] that talks about how media changes over time. In short, new media forms replace older forms, pushing the older forms into niches. An obvious example is TV replacing radio, where radio used to be full of story-based content, but when that content moved to TV, radio became largely a niche form of media, focusing on music (and talk shows and weather etc). This paints a picture of media forms along some continuum, which describes what you're looking for. [1] Media Literacy, W. James Potter
ineedasername 5y ago
I used to work in the industry. At least when it comes to fiction, it has always been hard to make a living as an author. A very large number of first-time authors never earn out their advance and therefore aren't able to get another book published. A reasonable portion of a publisher's authors are "mid-list", which consistently turn out books that earn out the advance plus a decent amount on top, and each new book also gives a slight boost to that author's back catalog. Long-term, this is how the average author earns a decent living: Output is maybe 3 books every two years. Early on, the advance might only be $15k to $30k per book, though once they earn out the advance they begin getting royalties. Once they have 6-8 books published, they have an audience and enough of a back catalog that they may earn up to $50k/book with royalties from the back catalog adding on a healthy bit on top. However "mid-list" encompasses a wide range, so this can also be lower or higher, especially because a mid-list author with 20+ books, turning out 3 books every two years, may still only get $40k advances based on new book sales, but with so many books in their back catalog even selling only 1000 copies of each book each year can add another $30k on their annual earnings. More if they're popular enough to get audiobook deals as well. These are the authors that basically keep the lights on for the publisher. Overall though, profitable publishing is a business of breakout hits, the authors that sell 50,000+ copies and hit the best seller lists. Failed first-time authors and mid-list authors may mostly cancel each other out on profit, and it's those few hits that push publishers into the black.
Semiapies 5y ago
From TFA: "There are thousands of paid fiction authors on Patreon but only 25 earn more than $1,000/month". $1000 * 12 < $100,000 But I get that HN isn't a place for usefully discussing this sort of issue, because it's packed with the people who are absolutely certain they'll be one of those 25.
- nly 5y ago
  Those authors could have other sources of income than Patreon though
  - Semiapies 5y ago
    Yes, what's commonly called "day jobs".
- nicolas_t 5y ago
  The numbers the author gives for patreon are blatantly false though. There's a few posts down in the thread of people like me who are wondering where those numbers come from.

andi999 5y ago

If you have a scalable product there is usually no middle ground. Either you are getting rich or just getting by, or even not getting by (last one the most likely one)

Siira 5y ago
Isn’t software a big exception to this?
- andi999 5y ago
  Is it? Can you elaborate? I think if you have a SaaS with happy 100 customers paying 10$ each per month it is easier to scale up to 10k customers than if you only have 2 customers to get to 200.
- watwut 5y ago
  No. Software follow the same pattern.
- muzani 5y ago
  Well you have this at roughly $2000 total: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sarasarasa.lifeup https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sarasarasa... And this at almost a million dollars: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.modelmakertools.simplemindpro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.modelmaker... I'm not sure if these are outliers, and my "random" sampling is just picking out highly visible apps. But I've made good money off an app built in a month, and I've made relatively little from a book written in 3 months. Software has a lot more variety. You can make say, a communist themed productivity app vs a forest themed one and these will appeal to different people.
- benibela 5y ago
  Software is the worst. After 15 years of open source development, I have basically earned nothing

salamandersauce 5y ago

Yes. Needs comparison to past years to be useful. Would also be helpful to compare books that came out in past year or few years to see how their sales trends. We also need to know what those books that are tracked are. Are they just in print titles? Or does it count 60 year old used biology textbooks for sale on Amazon no one wants? Or dated romance novels long past their prime? Because if those are included I'm not surprised they are struggling to sell 1000 copies. Even new books in niche academic fields can struggle to sell 1000 copies as the audience is so small.

ellegriffin 5y ago
I did mention Alexandre Dumas as a case study in a previous article. Here's a snippet: "But there used to be another way. When Alexandre Dumas debuted The Count of Monte Cristo it was published as a feuilleton—a portion of the weekly newspaper devoted to fiction. From August 1844 to January 1846 his chapters were published in 18 installments for The Journal des Débats, a newspaper that went out to 9,000 to 10,000 paying subscribers in France—and readers were rapt by it. In the forward to a 2004 translation of the book, the writer Luc Sante wrote: “The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled… is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else.” It was basically “Game of Thrones.” Readers could not wait to get their hands on the next chapter and that bode very well for the writer who was not only paid by the newspaper in real-time for his work (by the word), but also grew the popularity of his work over the entirety of the time it was being published. “The ‘Presse’ pays nearly 300 francs per day for feuilletons to Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, De Balzac, Frederic Soulé, Theophile Gautier, and Jules Sandeau,” Littell’s Little Age, Volume 10 wrote in 1846. “But what will the result be in 1848? That each of these personnages will have made from 32,000 to 64,000 francs per annum for two or three years for writing profitable trash of the color of the foulest mud in Paris?” That “profitable trash” earned those writers an annual salary of between $202,107 to $404,213 in today’s dollars—and the obvious disdain of that Littell writer who, even then preferred the merits of a bound and published book. The same volume goes on to say that Dumas earned about 10,000 francs ($65,743 today) per installment when he was poached from The Presse by The Constitutionnel in 1845." https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth

ghaff 5y ago

>Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? My assumption is almost certainly yes--provided you made it through the big publisher gatekeepers. (And were able to parlay that into shelf space at the store.) - People probably read more books. There were fewer other demands on attention, whether YouTube, social media, online content generally, etc. I certainly read books far less than I used to. - There was less competition once you got through the aforementioned gatekeepers. - There was less discounting. Books used to be sold at list price. And, subsequently, maybe at a small discount in some places. - Publishers often provided support with marketing activities.

TchoBeer 5y ago
>People probably read more books. There were fewer other demands on attention, whether YouTube, social media, online content generally, etc. I certainly read books far less than I used to. I'd imagine the number of books sold per year is strictly increasing.
- ghaff 5y ago
  This suggests otherwise. (Although this is obviously not a complete set of data. I'd actually probably have expected a bigger falloff but maybe ease of acquisition leads to more people buying books they don't end up reading.) https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publishing https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publish...
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I suppose the assumption is predicated on a rising population. Also you'd think last year might have led to more people reading books.
- jbay808 5y ago
  If it's increasing because of a growing number of readers, then that's a winner take all scenario where Harry Potter sells more and more copies as each new reader hasn't read it yet. If it's growing because of one extremely voracious reader buying up every book they can get their hands on, that's a scenario that favours more obscure authors.

cafard 5y ago

Recently in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, I noticed the passage He asked me whether he had mentioned, in any of the papers of the Rambler, the description in Virgil of the entrance into Hell, with an application to the press; 'for,' said he, 'I do not much remember them'. I told him, 'No.' Upon which he repeated it: Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisque in faucibus orci, Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus, Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas, Terribiles visu formae; Lethumque, Laborque. [Footnote: Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell; And pale diseases, and repining age; Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage; Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep, Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep. DRYDEN.] 'Now,' said he, 'almost all these apply exactly to an authour; all these are the concomitants of a printing-house.' I proposed to him to dictate an essay on it, and offered to write it. He said, he would not do it then, but perhaps would write one at some future period. (entry of Thursday, 14th October)

defen 5y ago
Did he ever write it, or is this the Fermat's Last Theorem of authorial metacommentary?
- cafard 5y ago
  The latter, I suspect. I don't remember any note to it in R.W. Chapman's edition.

KittenInABox 5y ago

I know offhandedly that at one point it was possible to live on one's short fiction but now that's been entirely squeezed out. (Unless you're Ted Chiang.)

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
That is sad. :( In happier news, I wonder if you can look at things in terms of "creators of entertainment" rather than just authors and get a happier picture. Like, for example, let's just consider authors and video game creators. Let's suppose that in the fifties, before video games, there were, say, 100,000 full-time fiction authors in the US. (That number sounds awfully high to me, but maybe.) Today, according to this article, there can only be at most about 7,000 full time fiction authors in the US. But according to this page[1], there are 260,000 people working in the videogaming industry. So if we only consider these two industries, that's 160,000 more people getting paid full time wages to create entertainment. That's sad if you want to be an author, but if you're concerned about the overall creation mix of society, then maybe it's not so sad. [1]: https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/video-games-united-states/ https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/vid...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  People “working in the videogaming industry” aren’t comparable to “fiction authors” but to “people working in the slice of the publishing industry involved in publishing fiction”. And the slice of the videogaming industry that is analogous to authors is probably a vastly smaller proportion than of print fiction publishing because there is so much more non-authorial stuff to do.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    That's a good point! From what I can find about 750k people are working in the publishing industry overall. It's hard to find statistics just for fiction publishing. I have to admit I'm a little surprised. I would have thought by now the videogame industry would be bigger than books, but maybe it's not.

blululu 5y ago

100k is not that unreasonable of an expectation as the necessary base for a freelancer. Keep in mind that you will need to cover additional taxes that your employer would normally cover, and you will need to plan on variability so you need more cushion than a salaried employee. Add in the fact that an author would need to be in the top 10% of a competitive field and you need to start considering the opportunity cost of not getting an office job.

ghaff 5y ago
And no benefits, including insurance. That $100K for a fairly to very successful author starts to look a lot like a pretty middling $60K or so income in an office job.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  You two make excellent points. Although the author seems greedy for wanting a 100k salary, that 100k is going to feel closer to 50k for reasons outside of their control.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    To be clear, I never said that it was greedy to want a $100k salary. It's a perfectly rational and ordinary thing to want. I wondered about how reasonable to was to expect to attain that level of financial success in writing.
    - ellegriffin 5y ago
      Well reasonable is a whole other thing. And I'm definitely not being reasonable! :)
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        "Never tell me the odds?" :) I wish you the very best of luck.

Vvector 5y ago

> I do also think that the expectation/standard of a $100k/year salary is a bit high. Agreed. Most writers do it because they love writing, not because they expect $100k/year. The money comes after the success. I wish her luck

ellegriffin 5y ago
I would call it more of a hope than an expectation. Really what I'm trying to figure out is if it's possible to monetize a niche audience (with fiction content) and make a living from it. I guess we'll find out... And thanks for the luck!
bambax 5y ago
> Most writers do it because they love writing The funny thing about writing is that writers mostly hate writing. Writers like being writers. They also like having written books. But the process, they despise. This is very different from other arts. Musicians enjoy playing music a lot. Performers, in general, love to perform. Even painters, I think, like to paint. Not writers.

kevinmchugh 5y ago

Vonnegut I remember writing somewhere that radio and especially TV had killed the market for short stories in magazines, which were a great way for authors to get started. Here's some other things he said on making a living as a writer: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/vonnegut-writing-iowa-workshop/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/vonnegut-writing-i... Note that he got paid $750 for his first short story in 1949! I don't know how many places are paying first time authors that much today, and then you remember to calculate inflation.

iib 5y ago
I assume even in radio and TV, not all segments are created equal. Maybe live, ad-libbed shows had a more detrimental effect, in the sense that at least scripted shows employ more writers? Also, would it not make sense to look at writing even from a more indirect point? For example, millions of people enjoyed the creativity of the /Friends/ writers, without actually reading a single word. Should they be counted as successful as a book writer with millions of readers?
padobson 5y ago
750 dollars in 1949 is about $9,000 in 2021. Vonnegut had to convince at least two gatekeepers: his own agent and the editor at Colliers. I spent a large chunk of time a few years back looking into the questions OP is asking, and the ultimate truth I came to is this: whether you're self publishing or going the traditional route, you're going to need some established gatekeepers to support you if you're going to make it. In 1949, those gatekeepers were traditional publishers. In 2021, we still have traditional publishers, but we also have content curation algorithms, social media influencers, podcast hosts, and platforms like Substack and Patreon. If you can get any of them to put resources into promoting you, you'll have a real opportunity of making it - that is, if what you're offering is any good. If you can't or don't want to get the attention of those gatekeepers, it doesn't matter how good your content is, no one will ever find you.
- pie420 5y ago
  Yep, in almost every industry it was always been 50% how good you are and 50% who you know. Over time, who you need to know to be successful has changed, and new artists need to adapt, as they always have. Getting an audience is easier than ever in history. That is amazing for hobbyists who just want some readers and recognition, and not great for those who want to earn a living while writing.

michaelt 5y ago

> Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? I suspect there is now a middle ground that didn't exist before: In the 1970s you were either selling >10,000 copies, or you weren't a published author. 'Self-publishing' had a reputation as a scam to extract money from naive would-be authors. (I'm not sure what the academic book market was like at the time) It's only with the rise of ebooks and print-on-demand that niche, low-selling authors have become a thing.

allturtles 5y ago
I don't think this is true. Niche and vanity presses have existed for a long time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press#History) Academic presses are also mostly very low volume. But academics don't expect to make a living from selling books (at least not directly - books help to establish reputations which can help you in the academic job market).
- michaelt 5y ago
  Vanity presses have indeed existed for a long time, but 50 years ago they were widely seen as a scam, rather than a realistic route to a writing career. Vanity publishers would tell every author their work had great sales potential, then charge them $2000 for $500 worth of editing, printing and marketing - so authors would not only fail to make money, they would actually make a large loss.
  - allturtles 5y ago
    I don't think that's a huge difference. It will still cost you money to get your Word doc into publishable shape (cover and interior design, editing, etc.) And you're still unlikely to make a significant profit on that upfront cost as a self-published author of PoD or eBooks. As to whether either form of self-publishing 'scam' or not, that depends on the expectations of the author. I think it's always been common to publish just to be published with no expectation of making money, hence the 'vanity'. But I have no data to back that up.

majormajor 5y ago

100k isn't what it used to be. I often suspect we haven't noticed the inflationary effects on this as a "high" salary as much as we otherwise would because of the psychological effect of the change from five to six figures. Yeah, the median salary is low, but that's been well-covered elsewhere about how it hasn't risen in line with costs or upper-percentile income - so think of this as just another example of "here's a field where you can't make a comfortable income anymore."

munificent 5y ago

> Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? One of the dominant subjective experiences of living today is the sensation that any possible amazing kind of life is right there and it is only up to us to reach out to pluck it. You go on Instagram and see people living blissful lives of travel in gorgeous locales while talking about how affordable it is. That random dude who wrote a series of posts on some story-telling Reddit ends up getting it optioned by Hollywood and is now a major screenwriter. The sea shanty Tik-Tok'er is a major label recording artist. Our culture's positive values of egalitarianism and opportunity say that whatever you want your life to be can be, if only you work hard enough to get it. The dark side of this is that many of us won't. And, in particular, in many areas, the total number of brass rings is relatively fixed and we can't all get them. A hundred years ago, most people didn't even think of becoming an author. It was a rarefied activity done by people who went to college and moved to New York City. For more, authors felt like an Other. It's not that their personal dreams of authorship were crushed by the lack of opportunity, it's like they never thought to dream it in the first place, any more than people dream of being howler monkeys or velour sofas. But today, media is more than happy to show us all possible dreams. Our social media aggregators filter out all of the lives you're likely to lead and show you only the best ones. So I think today many many more people consider and try to become authors than ever before. But the total amount of time spent reading isn't growing enough to accommodate that. While some will find success (for however they choose to define that), the end result is probably a much greater number of dreams thwarted than attained. I love this TED talk by Alain de Botton on success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY He says: "It is probably as unlikely nowadays that you would become as rich and famous as Bill Gates as it was unlikely in the 17th century that you would exceed to the ranks of the French aristocracy. But the point is it doesn't feel that way. It's made to feel by the media and other outlets that if you've got energy, a few bright ideas about technology, a garage, you too could start a major thing."

gurkendoktor 5y ago
Great comment! > A hundred years ago, most people didn't even think of becoming an author. The following is a bit tangential, but I keep thinking about it: I was watching this video on the Barnum effect recently, which basically says that people are likely to believe in the accuracy of vague descriptions of their personality (think horoscopes; "Libras need security"). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2HoscBLIw&t=4m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2HoscBLIw&t=4m23s The super-vague personality assessment, which was tailored to describe as many people as possible, included the wish for writing a novel (at 4m23s). That's how common this desire is/was? I wonder if the modern version of it would say "you have considered opening up on YouTube".

bun_at_work 5y ago

There's an interesting book [1] that talks about how media changes over time. In short, new media forms replace older forms, pushing the older forms into niches. An obvious example is TV replacing radio, where radio used to be full of story-based content, but when that content moved to TV, radio became largely a niche form of media, focusing on music (and talk shows and weather etc). This paints a picture of media forms along some continuum, which describes what you're looking for. [1] Media Literacy, W. James Potter

ineedasername 5y ago

I used to work in the industry. At least when it comes to fiction, it has always been hard to make a living as an author. A very large number of first-time authors never earn out their advance and therefore aren't able to get another book published. A reasonable portion of a publisher's authors are "mid-list", which consistently turn out books that earn out the advance plus a decent amount on top, and each new book also gives a slight boost to that author's back catalog. Long-term, this is how the average author earns a decent living: Output is maybe 3 books every two years. Early on, the advance might only be $15k to $30k per book, though once they earn out the advance they begin getting royalties. Once they have 6-8 books published, they have an audience and enough of a back catalog that they may earn up to $50k/book with royalties from the back catalog adding on a healthy bit on top. However "mid-list" encompasses a wide range, so this can also be lower or higher, especially because a mid-list author with 20+ books, turning out 3 books every two years, may still only get $40k advances based on new book sales, but with so many books in their back catalog even selling only 1000 copies of each book each year can add another $30k on their annual earnings. More if they're popular enough to get audiobook deals as well. These are the authors that basically keep the lights on for the publisher. Overall though, profitable publishing is a business of breakout hits, the authors that sell 50,000+ copies and hit the best seller lists. Failed first-time authors and mid-list authors may mostly cancel each other out on profit, and it's those few hits that push publishers into the black.

Semiapies 5y ago

From TFA: "There are thousands of paid fiction authors on Patreon but only 25 earn more than $1,000/month". $1000 * 12 < $100,000 But I get that HN isn't a place for usefully discussing this sort of issue, because it's packed with the people who are absolutely certain they'll be one of those 25.

nly 5y ago
Those authors could have other sources of income than Patreon though
- Semiapies 5y ago
  Yes, what's commonly called "day jobs".
nicolas_t 5y ago
The numbers the author gives for patreon are blatantly false though. There's a few posts down in the thread of people like me who are wondering where those numbers come from.