What Writers Get Paid and How
I’m posting this reply to a young correspondent who was
incited to write me by his Careers teacher, because I’ve found that a great
many people actually have no idea at all of how fiction writers make a living.
They read the glamor stories about million-dollar advances, but aren’t clear on
what an advance is, or any of the lingo of book publishing. This tiny summary
leaves out endless options and variations, but it gives the basic scheme as it
has existed for about a hundred and fifty years. Recently, copyright has both
been grossly over-extended by corporate greed, and threatened with destruction
by Internet indifference to its principles. All these arrangements rest
ultimately on copyright. E-publication may change them radically. But at
present, if you get a book or story published on paper, this is more or less
the plan.
Dear Daniel,
I answer a lot of letters and it takes a lot of time, so let
me just pick one of your questions to answer. You asked, “What is an average,
full-time fiction/fantasy writer’s salary?”
Fiction writers don’t get a salary. They are free-lancers,
paid by the job — that is, by the story or the book.
The way I do it is called “selling on spec.” When I’ve
written a story or a book, I (or my literary agent) submit it — send
the manuscript (MS) to a magazine or book publishing house (on paper, or
electronically.) An editor there reads the manuscript and decides if the
publisher should publish it.
If the publisher agrees with the editor, they offer me a contract:
they agree to pay me a certain amount of money in exchange for certain rights
to publish that story or book for a certain length of time.
The publisher rents only limited rights in it from me. I
keep the copyright, which means I can resell it if the publisher defaults,
etc. Other rights to the work, such as film rights, must be decided in the
contract between publisher and author; the more such rights authors can keep,
the more money they may make from the work.
If it’s a novel, the publisher usually contracts to pay the
author a sum before publication called an advance against royalties. The
amount of the advance depends on how much money the publisher expects to make
from the book.
The publisher also contracts to pay royalties, a
share (usually 4 to 10 %) of the cover price of each book sold.
The advance is said to be “against royalties” because it’s
considered to be taken out of the (future) royalties. The author only begins
to get royalties when the book has “earned out” — when the royalties earned are
greater than the amount of the advance. Advances are sure money up front; but
if the book stays in print, royalties are long-term income.
Another way to sell a book is to send the editor an outline
and a sample chapter or two, and if the editor likes it, the publisher will
give you a contract to write the book. Thus you get the advance for it before
it’s even written. A lot of writers do this, particularly genre writers and
bestsellers. The drawback is that you have to write what you promised to
write. I prefer the freedom of writing what I want to write when I want to,
and then submitting it on spec, though it’s financially much riskier.
Publishing itself is a risky business, as the publisher can
never be sure which book will be the bestseller and which will be the dud.
Even experienced editors can guess all wrong.
The huge advances that you hear of are very rare. Most
fiction writers can’t live by their writing alone. I spent nearly ten years
sending out stories before I got one published. Being a writer almost always
means having some kind of paying job too... and hanging in there!
I wish you the best with your writing.
— UKL
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