The Reality of Making Income as an Author

Lynn Viehl had a reposted article on the Publetariat blog discussing her sales and royalties from Twilight Fall, a top twenty New York Times bestseller.

As has been customary, a quick update on my own work. I'm still plugging away on my first draft of a novel; I am currently at 92,465 words, and still keeping up an average of about a thousand words a day. I think that's pretty good while holding up another job and family. Well, my job. I don't have another family. We now return to my post-motivational-mention-of-wordcount blog post.

Lynn discusses quite a bit of information about her income on that book, which is a real jewel considering how few bits of information like this come out. The scary part is the uncertainty; she's a bestselling author, established, and that makes her not exactly in the same boat as people who are trying to break into the industry. But if I (and other beginners) somehow manage to "make it", this may be one possible outcome.

The details are spelled on on the blog posting, but she said that the total net sales for the novel are 61,663 copies. Her net earnings on this particular statement was $2,434.38...she noted that it would probably take another six months to a year to earn out the last of her advance ($50,000).

She says:
So how much money have I made from my Times bestseller? Depending on the type of sale, I gross 6-8% of the cover price of $7.99. After paying taxes, commission to my agent and covering my expenses, my net profit on the book currently stands at $24,517.36, which is actually pretty good since on average I generally net about 30-40% of my advance. Unless something triggers an unexpected spike in my sales, I don’t expect to see any additional profit from this book coming in for at least another year or two.

From what I understand, an advance of $50,000 is reserved for authors who are established and can generally be counted on as having solid sales.  I don't have any solid proof, per se, but I believe that a beginning author who manages to sell their first novel is lucky to get $5,000 to $15,000 as an advance. She states in the posting that she believes, anecdotally, that her numbers are below the average NYT top twenty bestseller list, though.

She goes on to say that if she were like many writers and put out one novel with these kinds of sales per year and her family of four were dependent only on her income then she'd be making around $2,500 over poverty level. She'd be barely above the qualification for food stamps. OUCH!

I've made no bones that I'd love to be a successful author and move into that as a career. The reality is that while persistence and support could raise the odds of "making it" in such a career, or at least place it above winning the lottery, there is a very real possibility that it will only be a supplemental income (assuming it actually makes any income...)

I honestly don't know what the future will hold. There's a good chance my efforts will result in no payoff. There's smaller odds that my efforts will pay off in just enough to go out to dinner to celebrate that it actually sold. There's a very very slim chance that I'll manage to write enough books to actually get angry that the government is taking most of the advance in taxes. Odds that float around somewhere near the planet Krypton lay the chances that I could actually quit my day job and follow my dream of a home office in which I spend my days writing.

No matter the odds, I swore I'd give this an honest try to sell it. So here goes nothing!