For love or AND money

Money in writing is a direly secretive business, cloaked in mystery and whispers.

Even when book deals are reported in Publishers Marketplace, the exact advance amounts are coded. A “very nice deal” is an advance between $50,000 and $99,999. A “good deal” is anything between $100,000 and $250,000. (Honestly, a good deal to me is a Taco Bell burrito for $1.29.) Yes, some people do make very good money by writing. They make six figures and more. I personally make that much, and I want to tell you about it, but the idea of doing so makes me nervous at the same time.

Many writers feel shame about what they’re earning. They’re ashamed that it’s too little, or – more rarely – that it’s too much to confess, so they clam up, leaving everyone else guessing. Transparency among writers about their finances is something I couldn’t find when I was starting out in 2006. I thought writers either starved in garrets, or they had a hard time deciding which vacation home to buy next.

So now, as a full-time author with 26 books under two pen names, I don’t look to the side and shuffle away when other people speculate on current marketplace advances or whether self-publishing will reap more financial rewards than traditional deals. Even now, 13 years after I started, most writers still stay as quiet as if The Great Editor in the Sky will hear them reveal trade secrets and punish them with writer’s block and soda-covered keyboards.

We hear a lot about how writers make much money. We’re told not to quit our day jobs (nor should we, I think, till our debt is paid off and our savings are built up – more on that later). The incredibly depressing 2018 Author Income Survey taken by