Mark Terry

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Writers & Money

April 3, 2007
Tobias Buckell has an interesting and altogether too honest blog entry about money, novels and freelance writing.

In it, he references John Scalzi's blog, who has a long and interesting and honest post about how much money he made off his fiction in 2006.

John further links to a similar post he wrote the year before where he breaks down his writing income.

All three are quite fascinating. John Scalzi's doing very, very well as a freelance writer and novelist. So is Toby, for that matter, though it sort of pales to Scalzi's income. But, then again, Toby's just getting started. I'm somewhere inbetween the two of them.

Anyway, can writer's make money writing? Read and decide for yourself.

Best,
Mark Terry

4 Comments:

Blogger Spy Scribbler said...

For crying out loud. You know, everyone tells me I'm not a "real writer." RWA, because my publisher isn't recognized. SF-whatever, because I don't make enough cents per word.

But geeze. I gotta say, I'm doing a little better than a couple of real writers. Not as good as John the last year or two, but still.

I guess it depends on how much fiction you're willing to write and for who.

8:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks. Very interesting indeed. What one can make (or not) by writing is a question a lot of people seem to answer by finding an answer they're comfortable with. The fact, as I see it, that most writers make very little does not mean (as some would like to pretend) that it's practically impossible to make any appreciable amount or that no one makes anything aside from bestselling authors.

8:54 AM  
Blogger Mark Terry said...

Eric,
To me it seems to depend a great deal on the type of writing you do. I've found high-paying writing gigs by either writing pretty technical things in the biotech and medical field, or by writing business-y kinds of things about those same fields. I also had a great paying client writing for plumbers, but that dried up (no pun intended) after a year or so.

There are people who write feature-type articles for national pubs that pay really well, but those are tough, tough, tough to break into. I've done well with medical and medical business and biotech. gotta leverage your strengths, I guess.

SS,
Well, I'm reasonably certain my fiction $ will be higher in 2007 than they were in 2006.

12:05 PM  
Blogger Spy Scribbler said...

LOL, of course they will, Mark! I have no doubt things will keep looking up for you.

I guess the whole 'leveling' system of RWA irritates me more than I acknowledge, when I know people who make half of what I do are considered real writers. Stupid of me.

But then, I'm also obsessed with those little pieces of tape I get when I learn a new form in taekwondo. Do we ever really grow up, or do we just pretend?

(Pssst ... did you see pubrants two postings on the latest news in children's fiction?)

7:21 PM  

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