Nimue Brown posted: " (Nimue) My friend Mark Hayes recently put up a blog about how misleading authors can be about their own lives and successes. Most authors aren't making enough to live on - even authors at really big houses. Most authors are either working other jobs, " Druid Life
My friend Mark Hayes recently put up a blog about how misleading authors can be about their own lives and successes. Most authors aren't making enough to live on - even authors at really big houses. Most authors are either working other jobs, desperately poor, relying on someone else to pay the bills, or have some other income stream. You can read the post over here -
For most of my adult life, I've worked other jobs alongside writing. Some of those jobs were also in the book industry - marketing, blogging, editing. I've done social media work for people, I worked at a venue for a while as a duty manager, I've created monthly newsletters professionally and done office work and press work and all sorts. Most of it wasn't very exciting, and I've not talked about it much online.
I've also spent chunks of time being the person who was doing the boring jobs in order to pay the bills and thus enabling someone else to follow their creative dreams. I've been the person in the background who made it possible for someone else to seem like a successful creative professional when they - like most creative professionals - weren't earning enough to live on.
I inherited half a house when I was very young, and I used the money from that to make sure I've had secure living arrangements. If the roof over your head is sorted, it is easier to invest time in things that would not pay rent or a mortgage. I've been really fortunate in that regard.
Up until this point, I've never been able to focus entirely on my own creative work. It's always had to fit in around everything else, or I've been dealing with significant levels of illness and not able to work full time for those reasons. Right now I have the support to change all of that and a partner who wants to support me in what I do. This is not with any expectation that I'm going to make vast sums of money, but because he feels that what I make is worth supporting. This is a huge blessing and a privilege.
In terms of where I currently fit in the author success stakes, I'm in the top 5% for author earnings, and what I earn from books is not enough to live on. I've got books that have sold over a thousand copies, which isn't bad going. As I dabble in ghost writing, giving books away and encouraging people to tip me, Patreon, and other oddities, my book sales aren't the whole picture for how I do as an author. I have no way of knowing if I can do better through investing more time in my own work, but I have no doubt I'll be happier for being able to do that.
I've had people tell me that if I can't make a living from writing, it's 'just' a hobby. It has been part of my income stream for a long time, and has brought me to much of the work I've been doing to pay the bills. If making a living was the measure of authoring, there would be very few people we could call professional authors. But, there are always people who go round putting other people down for want of anything better to do, and I don't think there's much point paying much attention to them.
As Mark makes clear in his blog, we need to be more honest about the book industry. It's not comfortable exposing how things really are in a culture where value and payment are so closely linked. I write because I think it's worth doing, and enough other people like what I do for it to feel worth my keeping going.
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