2016 Novelist Income Survey

The UK's Society of Authors carries an interesting report on authors' incomes here, which might also be of interest.

jchines, I didn't make any money from writing this year, so I'll have to skip your survey. I wish I could have taken it! For many reasons

Old Hack said:

The UK's Society of Authors carries an interesting report on authors' incomes here, which might also be of interest.

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Wow, I knew this was a tough business and the numbers bear that out. These are average numbers. With many high-sellers who've had a successful year, I'm sure the median earnings were much lower.

If you asked in April (tax time) I would know. Until those 1099s come in the exact income I have made is a mystery to me.

*geeks out on all the data and loves it*

I'm only through the second one so far, and in case I missed it, are "indie" published authors self-pubbers? I was really amazed that they were (based on median) earni g as much as the big houses. I woild.have predicted most made the same or less than with a small pub.

Off to read more

About your correlation in Part 4: 0.16 is abysmally low. What this means is that the true correlation has only a 16% chance of falling within the variance of your sample. You have about a five in six probably of the next survey giving you a statistically significantly different result from this one. 0.06? Yeah, a 6% chance of the true value falling within your variance. You'd have better luck tossing a handful of marbles in the air and catching all of them in the same coffee can. Also, your $5M data point is probably forcing linearity on your sample that might not in fact be there, so if you took him/her out, that 0.16 would go even lower.

But here comes the data geek: Is there a way to color the dots based on indie, small and large? Ditch Mr Fancy Pants $5M best seller, zoom in and see if you get any grouping. If your head doesn't explode (mine does) read the Wikipedia article on principal component analysis and look for the pretty picture about 1/3 of the way down. With a data set as simple as yours, you might not see much grouping, but who knows? (BTW, I'm sure there's more to PCA than this, and to the correlation, for that matter, but I've been out of that field for a while and wasn't too good at it to begin with). My hypothesis (as you've noted with the 0.36--still really low--correlation) is that you will get grouping among the self pubbers, the small, and the large based on amount of work, but with the income between indie and larges so similar I'd love to see the result. Someone better at this than I might be able to do something really whizz-bang with that. You might need a much larger sample size, though.

ETA: Ooh! Simpler PCA explanation with neato pics. I don't like the 2D example, though, because it shows a highly linear relationship, and it might be more instructive with less linear data and (as I mentioned above and one of the commentors in the article does) if the categories of the data points were color coded.

jchines said:

I'm posting the results of the survey one chunk at a time. So far, I've got four sections online. There will be more to come, and I plan on pulling everything together into a single downloadable report when I'm finished.

Part 1: Overall income information, and agented vs. unagented
Part 2: The Large/Small/Indie Breakdown
Part 3: Income and Number of Books Published in 2016
Part 4: Impact of Marketing and Promotion

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How good are numbers!

Thanks for doing this.

Chris P said:

*geeks out on all the data and loves it*

I'm only through the second one so far, and in case I missed it, are "indie" published authors self-pubbers? I was really amazed that they were (based on median) earni g as much as the big houses. I woild.have predicted most made the same or less than with a small pub.

Off to read more

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The self published authors who submitted their data to the survey might be making the same as writers with large trade publishers, but that doesn't mean that the two groups overall are equal in their earning potential. I know I'm being negative here, but I can remember only too well the dreadful quality of most of the books submitted to me when I reviewed self-published works. There were very few competent books, let alone well-written, well-published ones. It was sad.

Old Hack said:

The self published authors who submitted their data to the survey might be making the same as writers with large trade publishers, but that doesn't mean that the two groups overall are equal in their earning potential.

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I think it really depends. If you eliminate the outliers in Jim's survey, it's clear that (almost) nobody is getting rich off of this gig. With self-pub, you've got more control over your income stream. With trade, you need to wait to earn out an advance, and it's been pointed out many times on this board that the vast majority of books never do that.

It's interesting, because the poll focuses on one single aspect of writing: money. It doesn't probe things like motivation or expectations. One thing that does seem clear from the poll is that if you're expecting to be able to support yourself as an author, you're almost certainly going to be disappointed, no matter what path you choose.

lizmonster said:

It's interesting, because the poll focuses on one single aspect of writing: money. It doesn't probe things like motivation or expectations. One thing that does seem clear from the poll is that if you're expecting to be able to support yourself as an author, you're almost certainly going to be disappointed, no matter what path you choose.

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Motivation and goals are of course important components of "success" in writing, but quantifying them for the purposes of a survey is difficult. How can you prove that I "want it" more than you do? The only way I've seen it done was to ask respondents how much they would be willing to pay to acheive a particular result. The questions about money and time spent on writing, promotion, marketing, etc are proxies in that higher motivation will spur writers to spend more money and effort. But they're not perfect proxies by any means. Two people who expend the same amount of effort don't necessarily have the same motivations or satisfaction, and the numbers get thrown off at the tail ends with people willing to pay any price in time effort and money or those who think they shouldn't have to pay a dime or even do revisions.

I need to look back at Jim's results, but are these data per book or per writer? I suspect it's much more common for a self-published writer to be making her median $17,000 per year from a dozen or more titles while a big house writer might make that from two. It would be interesting to see.

Oh, it's great data! I hope I didn't come across as critical. I just try to squeeze every bit of it I can

Your description of self selection makes sense. I hadn't considered that.

Chris P said:

Motivation and goals are of course important components of "success" in writing, but quantifying them for the purposes of a survey is difficult. How can you prove that I "want it" more than you do?

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I didn't really mean it like that. More like "what are your publishing goals and have you met them?"

Back when I was considering self publishing, my goal was to sell to 20 people I did not know (i.e. no friends or relatives). It wasn't a monetary goal, but it's how I was going to measure my relative success.

I do think it's a difficult thing to ask about in a survey, at least in any way that would make for useful results. Perhaps a blanket "how happy are you with how it's going?" might be worth something, but that's not as easy to interpret as numbers.

lizmonster said:

I think it really depends. If you eliminate the outliers in Jim's survey, it's clear that (almost) nobody is getting rich off of this gig. With self-pub, you've got more control over your income stream. With trade, you need to wait to earn out an advance, and it's been pointed out many times on this board that the vast majority of books never do that.

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I feel a bit nitpicky pointing this out, but... authors who are waiting to have their advances earned out have, of course, already BEEN paid for their writing. I'd say they actually have MORE control over their income stream, since they can negotiate (one hopes) with their publishers to get a bigger advance, they know when the advance will be paid, etc.

I'm a hybrid author, and I consider my self-published stuff to be my "gambling" or less controlled income. When I work with publishers (especially when I get a significant advance) I have a much better idea of how much money I'll be getting and when I'll be getting it. Anything that comes on top of earning out the advance is a bonus, really.

Captcha said:

I feel a bit nitpicky pointing this out, but... authors who are waiting to have their advances earned out have, of course, already BEEN paid for their writing. I'd say they actually have MORE control over their income stream, since they can negotiate (one hopes) with their publishers to get a bigger advance, they know when the advance will be paid, etc.

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Fair point.

Captcha said:

I feel a bit nitpicky pointing this out, but... authors who are waiting to have their advances earned out have, of course, already BEEN paid for their writing. I'd say they actually have MORE control over their income stream, since they can negotiate (one hopes) with their publishers to get a bigger advance, they know when the advance will be paid, etc.

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This is only true for those who earn out the advance. The majority of authors never get a second chance.

brkingsolver said:

This is only true for those who earn out the advance. The majority of authors never get a second chance.

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I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you suggesting that writers will only get second offers if their books earn out? Because that's not true. Books which fail to earn out will still usually turn a profit for their publishers, so it's not the end of the world if they don't make that particular stage.

brkingsolver said:

This is only true for those who earn out the advance. The majority of authors never get a second chance.

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No... you get the advance money FIRST, and then earning out would get you MORE money.

Like, if you get a $10K advance and only sell a hundred copies of your book, you still made $10K on that book. And, yes, you might have trouble getting a second contract if you only sold a hundred copies, but... you still have the $10K.

And not earning out your advance doesn't necessarily mean you won't get another contract... if the book totally tanks, that'd be an issue, but if the book does reasonably well and just doesn't quite hit the advance, it might not be an issue.

The big authors (Stephen King and his friends) apparently rarely earn out their advances - the advances are so big that no one really expects them to.

For smaller authors, with smaller advances, sure, earning out is important. But that's because earning out is a sign that the book sold well, not because earning out, in and of itself, is a key thing.

Yup. Also, earning out can be a long-term process. Publishers will not necessarily wait for it to happen before they give you a new deal and advance. You might even get one before the first book comes out, although that depends heavily on the publisher, your agent, and your individual circumstances.

I have seen lots of debates about whether it's better to have a small advance and modest expectations, or a large advance and high expectations (which are easier to disappoint). And it is an income stream that you can't predict or control beyond the current deal you have (i.e., you know roughly when those payments will come in, but you cannot be sure of securing a new deal after this one). If I were trying to live entirely on advances, I would, frankly, find it very anxiety-inducing.

Still, I get the impression that most writers are happy to have advances, period. Besides money in the bank, they represent a publisher's investment in the book and motivation to market it. Whether you feel more in control as a self-publisher, I suspect, depends on how confident you feel in your ability to tap into the target market and sell books as fast as you can write them. For some, that's a huge benefit; for others, not as much.

My agent recently negotiated a contract where we ended up taking a 25% reduction in the advance, but better royalties on unit sales. Just remember that an advance is essentially a loan, and you have to pay it back (through royalties only, and not if you don't earn out.) I personally think it's better to have a richer income stream and less money up front.

Dennis E. Taylor said:

My agent recently negotiated a contract where we ended up taking a 25% reduction in the advance, but better royalties on unit sales. Just remember that an advance is essentially a loan, and you have to pay it back (through royalties only, and not if you don't earn out.) I personally think it's better to have a richer income stream and less money up front.

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No, you don't have to pay it back. Not at all. Please don't say this, Dennis. I can see what you're trying to get at but it's really not accurate.