"From Bestseller To Bust" (Guardian Article)

My dream is to be able to make a living writing. Not to be a best seller or a millionaire or have my books turned into movies. I just want to be able to write all day long and know I can live comfortably without worrying about my finances.

That day isn't here yet, and I have no idea if it ever will be. I have some hope but no certainties.

This situation is not unique to writers. A lot of people are struggling to make ends meet. Given the economy most simply aren't going to have the luxury of doing what they please. A big part of being an adult is doing what you need to rather than what you want to.

I currently view my writing as being a part time job. It's an awesome part time job and I love it, but I can't rely on it to pay my bills. Maybe someday, but not now. That means my number one priority is the soul crushing, monotonous, boring job that lets me pay my bills and eat. Would I rather spend those forty hours at my lap top writing? Sure, but that's not a real option for me.

It's a depressing reality, but not one limited to authors. As adults we are responsible for ourselves, and often for others. If writing isn't enough to meet our needs then we have to be willing to do work that will.

That's just how the real world works.

Thanks for sharing this. I thought the article presented a narrow view of today's publishing landscape, and possibly just for the 'if it bleeds, it leads' effect.

Now is a time for artists of all types to apply some of their creativity to their distribution models. There's self-pub, patronage, subscription, and whatever else someone can dream up. Most of us will never be able to quit our day jobs, but that's nothing new. At least we have a better shot at being read.

Personally, the ability to publish my work on my own if I choose has lit a fire under my productivity. I feel like if I don't sell my novel in the traditional way, then at least I can publish it myself & save that book from sitting in a drawer. I also feel liberated from having to stick to the form of either novel or short story; I have an idea for a serialized piece that I never would have considered doing five years ago, & I wrote 4 short non-fiction ebooks on a sports niche that I self-pubbed. I wouldn't have written them otherwise; they're too short for a book & too long for a magazine. They earn enough to pay for 2 dinners out a month -- it's not much, but just a single month's royalties are more than I could have gotten from the only magazine in my sports niche. And over the course of a year, it's nice little bit of change.

It's a digital world: adapt or die. I couldn't be happier to be a writer today. . I love having options.

Last month, I was pleasantly surprised to discover I'd made more in writing in 2013 than I ever had before. Well, sort of pleasantly, because I also discovered I'd have to pay tax on it, which isn't going to be a fun check to write since it'll be in the mid-four figure range.

So readers are still out there, whether they read on paper or screen, or maybe they're listeners on audio. But even if I finally break through to the 6 or 7 figure per book range, I don't ever know that I'll give up my day job, because my day job is part of me too. It part of my self-identity.

I don't fear the future of publishing. There are soooo many options today. It's actually very exciting.

I'm irritated by the way it segues from Rupert Thomson's predicament to a vague argument about how the internet is the Big Bad, because copyright. There isn't actually an argument presented about how Thomson's copyrights are being infringed on in such a way as to hurt his sales (and thus advances) just a sort of rhetorical juxtaposition.

Torgo said:

I'm irritated by the way it segues from Rupert Thomson's predicament to a vague argument about how the internet is the Big Bad, because copyright. There isn't actually an argument presented about how Thomson's copyrights are being infringed on in such a way as to hurt his sales (and thus advances) just a sort of rhetorical juxtaposition.

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I was interested in both, but actually stopped to check if I had skipped to a separate article (injured my eye the other day, text is fuzzing a bit) because it didn't read like one piece.

This article (and others like it) stir some very basic feelings in me. Hopefully this won't be considered too tangential to the thread topic.

All of the rah-rah articles about the fantastic successes of a select few authors, and all of the gloom-and-doom articles about another subset of writers don't hold particular lessons for me.

I have to (we all have to) pay attention to my (our) particular situation(s) and make reasonably sound financial decisions about both the present and the future. Writers are writers whether they spend full time at it or cobble together irregular time increments whenever possible. Some us are lucky enough to have spouses or partners who can financially support us, partially or fully. Others of us have familial obligations that can include children and extended families. Some of us are single parents who have no choice but to provide some form of financial stability for those who are dependent upon us. Some of us have wonderfully fulfilling day jobs, others are extremely unhappy with their available means of support.

Despite this wide spectrum of situations, we should hold ourselves to some common attitudes toward our writing (others may want to add to this list, others may want to dismiss this in part or in whole):

1) Regardless of our writing methods, we should strive to write to the very best of our abilities, and continually seek ways to improve in the writing and storytelling crafts. The best way to enhance the possibility of our financial success is to write damn good stories, and to continually work to make subsequent ones better and better. Another way to look this--the enemy of excellence is "good enough," and which of these two options do we think will best serve our developing business plans for our writing?

2) We should try our best to make sound financial decisions about both the present and the future. This means we shouldn't rely on isolated accounts of fantastic success, nor should we succumb to dire predictions of an equally small sample of those having difficulties. We can gain encouragement from the former and warnings from the latter, but there is danger in relying too heavily of either.

3) This is a very subjective business, which makes any prediction difficult at best, particularly related to our individual potential for financial success. Therefore, we should make our decisions based on actual data rather than on an anticipation of possible success. If we make a decision to give up the day job, it shouldn't be made based on the successes of others we deem our equals, but based on a reasonable track record of our actual financial gains and costs.

4) We have to realize this is a "what have you done for me lately" type of business. Great financial success in one year doesn't guarantee any degree of financial success in the next or subsequent years. Writing is a continuous hustle that requires a different kind of financial planning than a regular and long-term day job. When we were new to this writing thing, many of us had those dreams of multi-million dollar successes in the backs our our minds, and in our imaginations. If we continue to let those dreams dominate a more realistic evaluation of likely success in this business, we might want to also continue to buy lottery tickets.

4) Never have so many different kinds of publishing options been available to us. This has led to some very different business models for publishing. We should avoid any fanatical or evangelical devotion to any one model, but keep our mind clear to take advantage of any and all models that are available. But we have to be totally honest about not only the financial gains of each, but also the up-front financial and time costs of each. We also have to be wary of the volumes of misinformation that have been spread by those who forward the fanatical or evangelical devotions as absolute truths.

5) We should realize that writing is something we do, it is not what and who we are. We are still sons and daughters. Some of us are fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. We are friends, and we are fellow humans. Our lives should be full of much more than just writing. We should seek to be a part of our world (even if we spend all of our writing time creating alternate worlds), and we should interact with others in this world. The data for writing comes from our experiences and our observations from our world. If we become hermits and limit our experiences and observations to books or computers, our writing may turn out to be as two dimensional as the pages of those books or that computer screen.

6) The possibility is strong that we may live long enough to where we are unable to do certain types of work. As long as we remain mentally active (physically active would help as well), we can continue to write until we stop breathing or until we lose our wits. But whether we are 20 years old or 60 years old, we should have some sort of forward-looking plan for financial support through our later years because of the limitations that come with advanced age.

7) One possession for which we should never allow compromise is our personal integrity. We should run our flag of personal ethics all the way up the pole even if a half-mast setting promises additional financial rewards.

If this is too far afield of the thread topic, someone give me a heads-up and I'll delete.

I've never considered writing to be something I could or would quit my day job to do. There are simply too many variables outside my control for me to consider banking on writing as my sole income. While I feel (a little) for those writers who suddenly find themselves adrift financially, I can't help but wonder where their common sense was. Did they not stop to think that as suddenly as this "boom" started, it could end just as suddenly?

ap123 said:

because it didn't read like one piece.

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I had a hard time with this article because of this reason.

shadowwalker said:

I've never considered writing to be something I could or would quit my day job to do. There are simply too many variables outside my control for me to consider banking on writing as my sole income. While I feel (a little) for those writers who suddenly find themselves adrift financially, I can't help but wonder where their common sense was. Did they not stop to think that as suddenly as this "boom" started, it could end just as suddenly?

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Hmmm. That depends on what the day job is. Not every day job is well paying, stable, or comes with benefits.

I walk dogs. I actually don't do it for the love of dog poop. Would I stop if I had some money coming in from writing? Yup.

There is no shortage of readers, there's almost a surplus. Books still sell like crazy, if readers like them. What happens to any one or two or three or ten writers means nothing. There is no career on earth where some people don't lose out, have financial problems, can't make ends meet, etc.

A LOT of writers earn a very, very good living by writing. Morethan at any other time in history.

New businesses fail at such a rate that it's a wonder anyone ever starts a new business. But they do, and while most fail, some do very well. The same thing is true of writers.

But it isn't about awards, unless it's something like the Nobel that hands out a lot of money to go with the award. Most awards do give some extra publicity, but they're targeted at writers who usually write for small readerships.

It isn't easy to earn a living as a writer, but it isn't easy to earn a living by starting a new business, either. Or by doing pretty much anything, other than getting a good education and finding a nine to five job that pays well. Many even fail at this, and teh number of college educated people who can't find any work is staggering.

Earning a living from writing is not only possible, a lot of writers are doing just fine at it.

Here's the thing about Rupert Thomson:

I have read two of his novels: his first, DREAMS OF LEAVING, and the book that probably ought to have been his break-through book, THE INSULT.

These are excellent novels in a sort of Kafkaesque mode - dreamlike, sinister - but they're not exactly easy novels to chat about round the water-cooler. After THE INSULT he wrote some apparently even less commercial novels, none of which were any easier to sum up in an elevator pitch, and though I own a copy of SOFT! (which I bought in a charity shop) I have never opened it, because the concept didn't appeal or the publisher wasn't really able to describe it either in terms of packaging (a sharp contrast to THE INSULT) or cover copy (unappealing, to be honest.)

Maybe he's been badly published. But it's odd for McCrum to suddenly swerve into a diatribe against the Internet when eight of Thomson's nine novels came out before Amazon launched the Kindle.

It is possible for writers of high-brow, woozy, dreamlike, eclectic, hard to categorise novels to be commercially successful even in the modern day. Haruki Murakami's new book came out in Japan and sold one million copies in the first week. I'll repeat that: One million. In the first week. I'm sure his advances are just fine.

ap123 said:

Hmmm. That depends on what the day job is. Not every day job is well paying, stable, or comes with benefits.

I walk dogs. I actually don't do it for the love of dog poop. Would I stop if I had some money coming in from writing? Yup.

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A lot of people (writers and non-writers) have crappy jobs. Even more people are working at jobs that are not their "dream jobs". But those crappy jobs pay the bills, and if they lose them, they look for another - and sometimes they find one that's not as crappy. Should I feel sorry for someone who has a "dream" job they know is not stable and who doesn't put aside anything for a rainy day and then whines because suddenly they find themselves facing the prospect of actually having to look for something less than ideal to pay their way? I don't think so. It's called Welcome to the Real World.

shadowwalker said:

A lot of people (writers and non-writers) have crappy jobs. Even more people are working at jobs that are not their "dream jobs". But those crappy jobs pay the bills, and if they lose them, they look for another - and sometimes they find one that's not as crappy. Should I feel sorry for someone who has a "dream" job they know is not stable and who doesn't put aside anything for a rainy day and then whines because suddenly they find themselves facing the prospect of actually having to look for something less than ideal to pay their way? I don't think so. It's called Welcome to the Real World.

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I didn't have the impression Thomson was looking for anyone to feel sorry for him. Maybe I missed it, the article wasn't clearly written, imo.

For myself, as someone who works a (literally) crappy job, I'd still take my shot at living off my writing if there was money coming in from it. No guarantees of anything, from anyone, about any job/source of income. I'm quite familiar with the Real World, I was welcomed long ago.

My goal is to work full time. Write on the side. Publish. By the time I retire at 65, I'll then "write for a living." Happily.

Two grandmothers lived until 95, well able to function up until the last year. So, you're all stuck with me and my awful stories for a looooooong time.

shadowwalker said:

A lot of people (writers and non-writers) have crappy jobs. Even more people are working at jobs that are not their "dream jobs". But those crappy jobs pay the bills, and if they lose them, they look for another - and sometimes they find one that's not as crappy. Should I feel sorry for someone who has a "dream" job they know is not stable and who doesn't put aside anything for a rainy day and then whines because suddenly they find themselves facing the prospect of actually having to look for something less than ideal to pay their way? I don't think so. It's called Welcome to the Real World.

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The article describes the writing boom Thomson was riding as from around 1980 to 2007. I'd say it's a tad unreasonable to expect someone to predict the economy 27 years in the future. Even a college full of economists couldn't do that. If in 1990, say, a writer found they could live middle class off their writing, I don't think it's reasonable to accuse them of making bad financial decisions by choosing to go to writing full-time.



If some writer today sold their first book for a mid five-figures and then immediately decided to quit their day job, that would be silly. But that's not what happened to Thomson or probably many of the mid-list writers referred to in the article. For a long period of time, it was possible to live well as a mid-lister, both in Britain and the US. Taking that option was not irresponsible. Plenty of other mid-list writers are still doing okay, if not fantastic as full-timers. It's essentially just bad luck which ones are still succeeding and which are losing their livelihoods.

I'm really appreciating NeuroFizz's thoughtful post. The article itself I found hard to follow but basically it seemed that the writer was attempting to analyze a situation full of change, and drawing some false conclusions. An assumption that seemed present in the article is that there was a time when there was some security in the writing life, and in economic life in general, and he is trying to make the case that the internet and the "dread march of Amazon" (I think were his words) have ruined things.

Well, okay. In my own experience though, there never has been security, and there still is not. There also has never really been any way to predict which choices will set one up for a "secure future." I do see that the landscape has changed tremendously, but ultimately we all have to take our best guess and put one foot in front of the other, in writing and in life.

I didn't find anything in the article of use at all, frankly. Perhaps that was not the intention of it.

I've never expected to make a living writing, and never tried to do so. I have mistakenly expected to be able to work all my life and have found that, oops, no, despite any effort to achieve that end, most of my fallback occupations are not possible for me to do now. My appreciaton of NeuroFizz's post has a lot to do with its accuracy in reference to my own situation.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

If in 1990, say, a writer found they could live middle class off their writing, I don't think it's reasonable to accuse them of making bad financial decisions by choosing to go to writing full-time.

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Writing, in and of itself, in unpredictable. The market is unpredictable. Anyone making a living at anything that unstable needs to make provisions for changes, whether it's in the next year or the next 30. Deciding to write full-time was not the bad decision - not making provisions for the future was. Or did they seriously think nothing would change over this past 30 years?

I have to say I'm really loving this thread. All great points on why not to give up. Writing needs real passion, passion that can't be defeated even by articles like these.

Looking at the article from a purely analytical perspective (which I'm inclined to do after spending another weekend judging debate), that article was a trainwreck. If you're going to expound on economic change, you do it through an analysis of data, not a handful of empirical examples that may or may not be typical.

I could write an article about The Twilight/50 Shades authors and the Hunger Games chick and say the opposite. That wouldn't be accurate either.

Functionally, that article did nothing to discuss any aspects of the writers' economy in a way that educates anyone about anything. Or at least it hadn't before I got to the point I started skimming. Maybe I missed something.

Making money in writing had been a difficult task for many authors over the centuries. The anecdotal examples do serve to illustrate the point, but add little to anyone's particular situation.
I haven't publish anything yet. I hope to change it one day. Regardless if I'm published or not, I'm not quitting my day job. But that's me. Someone else with a completely different background and a mindset may quit their job after the initial success and depend entirely on the writing career.

shadowwalker said:

Writing, in and of itself, in unpredictable. The market is unpredictable. Anyone making a living at anything that unstable needs to make provisions for changes, whether it's in the next year or the next 30. Deciding to write full-time was not the bad decision - not making provisions for the future was. Or did they seriously think nothing would change over this past 30 years?

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Lots of jobs could change over 30 years. Factory work did. Plants got shut down, for example, leaving whole towns in the lurch. If only they'd made provision for it.

There has been a sea-change in publishing recently. Not as enormous as many make it out to be, but it happened/is happening. Much like factory work, it's only in hindsight that we can be so knowledgeable and superior to those poor fools who lived it from the beginning.

shadowwalker said:

<snip> Should I feel sorry for someone who has a "dream" job they know is not stable and who doesn't put aside anything for a rainy day and then whines because suddenly they find themselves facing the prospect of actually having to look for something less than ideal to pay their way? <snip>

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As someone who has their "dream job," but knows it's unstable, I say absolutely not. It took me years of hard work and sacrifice to get where I am in my career, but it's a position at the mercy of political winds that could change at the next local election. That's exactly what happened with my last position.

Writing will likely never replace my full-time income plus benefits, but I don't intent for it to. It did, however, provide a nice cushion when my previous position was eliminated and it helps build my savings account in case those political winds blow in the wrong direction again.

No industry is change-proof, publishing included. While the changes in publishing are lamented by some, I would venture to say those changes have opened up doors for many writers like myself who might have never jumped into the deep end of the pool without them.

Back in Philip K Dick's day, speculative genre fiction meant either having a day job or balancing on the edge of poverty or cranking out half a dozen titles and fifty stories a year.

Today 'real lit' is apparently on the verge of becoming like genre lit was in the 1950's and 1960's. I also seem to remember that even the great Graham Greene, when he decided to become a writer, divided his output into stuff that would make him money, and stuff which would bring him acclaim. Of course, no one else saw the difference between the two, but that's the beside the point, it's the intent and the context of the intent that counts in this example.

Gil Brewer was a stellar pulp noir writer who went from selling millions to begging for loans from his agent to make it through the month.
Robert McCammon was 'the other Stephen King' for almost a decade, millions in print, etc., before something broke and he fell away from the field to sulk for a decade, before returning with a lovely 18th century detective serial strictly for connoisseurs.
David Wingrove, who wrote Chung Kuo--a Game of Thrones set in a China-dominated future--also went from top to bottom during the course of his magnum opus.
Harry Connolly was supposed to be 'the other Jim Butcher', and then it all came crashing down (hopefully not for long, the man is still in his prime and full of potential).
John Norman's Gor sold millions during the hayday of primal patriarchic heavy metal. Now, not so much.
Graham Masterton (the Manitou) and Shaun Hutson (Slugs) and Peter Straub all soared with their first books, and then could never repeat the success for the next thirty plus years. Straub's co-writing with King not counting, of course.

It happens. To me, the moral of this article and others like it is 'don't get complacent or life will get you'.

Not a very good article. It chose two writers that I'd imagine very few people have ever heard of, so the title is misleading. Technically, they probably did get onto bestseller lists, but they're not the kind of writers people think of when they hear the word bestseller.

They may be award winners, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll sell. Usually, you have to win one of the really big awards to sell a book that is otherwise not very commercial. It's a shame for many literary writers that that's the case, but the fact is the market for fiction that's more on the literary side is not as large.

If I were writing literary fiction, I wouldn't go into it thinking it would make me enough to quit my day job. Heck, even in commercial fiction, that's far from a guarantee, even if you do get published.

You don't quit your day job until you can actually do so financially.