Professionals?

[Virtuoso]

I'm curious--are there actually people who make a living solely on short-fiction? How do they survive. Are they incredibly prolific? Or do they engage in criminal activities (grave-robbing, perhaps?) after dark in order to pay the bills? For real, though. Can people really do it?

[Jamesaritchie]

I'm curious--are there actually people who make a living solely on short-fiction? How do they survive. Are they incredibly prolific? Or do they engage in criminal activities (grave-robbing, perhaps?) after dark in order to pay the bills? For real, though. Can people really do it?

I don't know any writers who earn a living solely from short fiction, though I have known two or three who could have, depending on what you call a living.

There just aren't very many short story markets these days that pay much. Fifteen years ago, it was at least possible to earn a living writing short fiction, though even then I knew only two writers who actually did so.

Now, I doubt it. You'd have to be very prolific, and you'd have to sell just about everything you wrote.

I won't, however, say it's impossible, just highly unlikely. I think you would have to be able to sell to the top markets, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, etc., and still sell a bunch of stories to other magazines.

I just don't know. And it really does depend on what you call "a living."

It's a heck of a lot easier to earn a living selling nonfiction. Quite a few writers out there manage that. But short fiction?

Let me put it this way, five or so years ago, when my health was good and I could write as much as I wanted, I was selling short stories regularly, and to some very good markets in the $1,000+ range. I still couldn't earn a living from short fiction alone. Writing short stories full time, selling almost everything I wrote, and hitting several top markets still brought in no more than $22,000. With just a bit of luck, I could have brought this up to $30,000, but in all honesty, your income from writing short stories is going to fluctuate greatly, even if you're both good and fast, and and one year you might bring in $22,000, and the next year only $6,000-7,000, even if you write the same amount of fiction.

And you can hit a slump and bring in almost nothing. The competition is just too keen, and there are only so many markets that pay any amount of money. Even if you are a professional, you can't count on money from short fiction, which means you won't be able to plan a budget around it, even from one week to the next.

Even most selling novelists average only $7,000-$12,000 per year, let alone most selling short story writers.

Unless you can write a novel that hits the bestseller list, at least on the bottom, the way to earn a living from writing is to diversify. You write short stories, you write all sorts of articles, you write a novel, you write recipes, for heaven's sake.

They say it's a hundred times easier to sell an article than it is to sell a short story, and I think this is an underestimate.

I don;t know if any of this helps, but it's a complicated subject. I will say that selling short stories can be a super supplement to your income. It just isn't money you can count on to pay the rent.

[Virtuoso]

Thanks James! I suspected this might be the case. I have a couple of friends--'creative writing' majors at my school--who have this idea that they can subsist on short-fiction, and I've been trying to convince them otherwise--that short-fiction is not a profession so much as one of the mediums of a profession.

I guess even creative writers have to eat, stay out of the rain, and wear clothes.

Thanks for your reply. Very illuminating.

[rich]

Both fiction and poetry writers fall into that category. Most of the more successful dream weavers support themselves through academia sources and other jobs. For the most part, it's not so much an occupation as it is an obsession.

[Jamesaritchie]

Thanks James! I suspected this might be the case. I have a couple of friends--'creative writing' majors at my school--who have this idea that they can subsist on short-fiction, and I've been trying to convince them otherwise--that short-fiction is not a profession so much as one of the mediums of a profession.

I guess even creative writers have to eat, stay out of the rain, and wear clothes.

Thanks for your reply. Very illuminating.

I will say this for short fiction. Selling short stories can greatly increase novel sales, and novel sales can make selling short fiction easier.

And there's always the possibility that a short story can become a screenplay and generate a ton of money.

But, no, writing short stories is not a profession. You summed it up very well. At best, selling short fiction is merely one of the mediums of a profession.

[rich]

With exceptions like Poe and O Henry and some others.

[Count_LeCo]

I don't know about O'Henry, but Poe never made much money on anything in his lifetime, especially his short fiction.


He died penniless and alone, in mysterious circumstances possibly related to an ether addiction.

[rich]

I was thinking more about the medium/profession thing.

[Jamesaritchie]

With exceptions like Poe and O Henry and some others.

Even they couldn't make a living from writing short stories. Poe made so little money it's a wonder he kept trying. He had troubhle selling anythng while alive. O Henry did much better, but even he didn't earn nearly as much as you might think.

And they lived in an age when there were hundreds of magazines that paid pretty good money.

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

Ray Bradbury did it back in the olden days--made a living for himself and supported his wife and kids with it. In his Zen In The Art Of Writing (ooh, Amazon says there's an expanded version!!! Wait, I think I have it), he describes this insane regimen of writing and submitting one new story per week. One day I hope to be capable of same, but I doubt very much my ability to make a living at it.Fifteen years ago, it was at least possible to earn a living writing short fiction, though even then I knew only two writers who actually did so.The amusing thing is, I recall people saying that fifteen years ago. ;)

[ahmedakhan]

I believe Harlan Ellison did make a living as primarily a short story writer - and so did Ray Bradbury.

Best.

Ahmed

[Jamesaritchie]

Ray Bradbury did it back in the olden days--made a living for himself and supported his wife and kids with it. In his Zen In The Art Of Writing (ooh, Amazon says there's an expanded version!!! Wait, I think I have it), he describes this insane regimen of writing and submitting one new story per week. One day I hope to be capable of same, but I doubt very much my ability to make a living at it.The amusing thing is, I recall people saying that fifteen years ago. ;)

Yeah, those guys didn't do too bad, did they? But neither Bradbury nor Ellison really earned a living from short stories for very long, and it wasn't much of a living even when they did.

What really provided Bradbury with money was "Fahrenheit 451," the book versions of "The Martian Chronicles," and screenplays. He wasn't earning much money at all until he wrote these. He wouldn't even have made as much from short stories or collections, had 451 not built his reputation.

The same has always been true of Harlan Ellison. Relatively speaking, Ellison hasn't made all that much money from short stories, but has earned a boatload from script writing. (He has used 26 pseudonyms that I know of, and probably a few I don't know.)

If you're talking selling only genre short stories for a living, this probably hasn't been possible since the sixties.

Not only are there very few magazines to write for now, but inflation has killed any real chance of earning a living from writing short fiction. In 1969 you could buy a brand new car, a nice one, for $2,500, and most magazines paid from two to five cents per word. Today that same car can cost ten times as much, but magazine pay has barely gone up at all, and in some cases is actually lower than it was then.

Up until about 1970, if you could sell a short story per week you would almost certainly earn more than a factory worker. Considerably more, if you sold to the better markets. Make those same sales today, and you'd be lucky to earn minimum wage.