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+1 If money were no object, I'd love to be a novelist. I'd love nothing more than for books to be my main focus in life. But money is an object, and it seems t

+1 If money were no object, I'd love to be a novelist. I'd love nothing more than for books to be my main focus in life. But money is an object, and it seems tremendously hard to acquire as a writer. To make a decent living, you're basically banking on becoming one of a few dozen celebrity writers. Even then, you'd expect to make be making pennies compared to the elites in almost any other field (music, business, sports, etc). The only serious money to be made is franchising your IP into a more-monetizable medium, like movies. I know art isn't supposed to be about making money, but being a full-time novelist seems too precarious for all but the most foolhardy among us.

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
Other ways people make a living as a "novelist" or just author I guess: - ghost writing (very common, most books by celebrity or popular figures for instance) - not writing literature (not to be crass about it, but a lot of authors that make a living doing it find a template that works and beat the living daylights out of it as quickly and as much as they can; art is secondary to speed, smash and grab plots, and simplicity; each book might not be a top seller, but the total sales can be livable; think airport departure lounge books) - they spend almost all of their time outside of writing on marketing - they work in the publishing industry (increasingly common to look at some debut young author to see that they actually work in the industry, or were in some way affiliated by way of employment with the publishing industry) - video game writing and or speech writing