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How Authors get paid

Got a question/comment about the business of writing or about the publishing industry? Here's your place to post it!
Chatterbox
Bibliophile
Posts: 1667
Joined: April 2009
Location: New York

Post by Chatterbox » Wed June 10th, 2009, 8:20 pm

ha, people in the City are 90% only in it for the money. (I'm always stunned to run across someone in finance who is committed and passionate.) They profess to envy us... I do know a former banker turned hedge fund manager who is trying to write a book now. *roll eyes*

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Margaret
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 2440
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: I can't answer this in 100 characters. Sorry.
Favourite HF book: Checkmate, the final novel in the Lymond series
Preferred HF: Literary novels. Late medieval and Renaissance.
Location: Catskill, New York, USA
Contact:

Post by Margaret » Wed June 10th, 2009, 8:47 pm

I should probably amend my statement to "you really can't write fiction for the money, so you might as well write it from your passion." After all, lawyers spend much of their time writing briefs and pleadings, CIA analysts spend much of their time writing briefings, publicists spend much of their time writing press releases, and some authors spend much of their time writing computer software manuals. Most of these folks get paid pretty well. But this is a completely different type of writing from fiction (or even narrative nonfiction). Good fiction is much more difficult to write than any of this sort of stuff (important though it may be - some would argue far more important than fiction, though probably none of us would be among them) and does not pay as reliably or (in the vast majority of cases) as well. But who would write press releases or computer software manuals out of the pure passion for the process of writing them?
Browse over 5000 historical novel listings (probably well over 5000 by now, but I haven't re-counted lately) and over 700 reviews at www.HistoricalNovels.info

Chatterbox
Bibliophile
Posts: 1667
Joined: April 2009
Location: New York

Post by Chatterbox » Wed June 10th, 2009, 9:27 pm

As someone who writes narrative nonfiction, I'd argue that it's just as difficult as fiction (which I've also tackled, though not as yet tried to publish anything.) It certainly isn't the same as what I would call commercial writing (position papers, manuals, legal articles, etc. etc.) In fiction, the challenge is dialogue, character, plot; in narrative non-fiction, the challenge is to create something that reads as if it were fiction, but that is constrained by the actual events. You can't make something more dramatic by inserting a new character or a piece of action or a plot twist; you rely solely on language.

Sorry if I sound heated about that; it's because I'm tearing my hair out over just such an issue right now. I've actually started writing the first chapter of my HF work in the last week or two as a stress-buster. I'm sure it won't stay that way, but that's what brought the contrast to light for me so clearly.

In both cases -- fiction and narrative non-fiction -- your audience won't stick around if your writing isn't fabulous. In the commercial writing arena, no one is reading what you write because of your deathless prose, but because their profession requires them to obtain the information you're dispensing.

Thankfully, rank and file narrative NF writers do get better paid than many fiction writers. Because there are fewer of us out there who do it or dream of doing it, I suspect -- classic supply & demand.

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MLE (Emily Cotton)
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 3566
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
Location: California Bay Area

Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Thu June 11th, 2009, 1:35 am

Ah, supply and demand-- there's the rub! It's almost impossible to make money doing something when a lot of people are willing to do the same thing just for the fun of it. Granted, most of them won't be as good as someone who must make their living that way. But when the numbers go up and up and up, it squeezes the pros into a tiny corner. And when the amateurs become numerous enough, a lot of them are going to be as good as the pros.

For instance, I used to raise llamas commercially, and very lucrative it was, too, since there was way more demand than supply. The number of llama breeders was constrained by the animals available in countries free of FMD (foot and mouth disease), and we were very happy campers.

And then the supply rose to meet the demand, and the money went flat. Because there are a lot of people willing to lose money just to enjoy baby llamas. And you can't make money in that kind of market. Eventually the whole structure reaches a toppling point, and everybody loses their shirt.

I know the feel of a sinking market, and the publishing industry has the same panicked feel as the llama industry circa 1992, with some people loudly proclaiming the beauty of the emperor's new clothes, while a few are wondering if anybody else thinks he looks naked...

And all that doesnt' even take into account the new technologies about to turn the old world on its head. Book producers are carriage-horse breeders in the early days of Henry Ford, declaring that nothing will replace old Dobbin because we all love our horses, and who wants a smelly, unreliable horseless carriage anyway?

They have forgotten that the point for others was always to get from here to there.
Last edited by MLE (Emily Cotton) on Thu June 11th, 2009, 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Chatterbox
Bibliophile
Posts: 1667
Joined: April 2009
Location: New York

Post by Chatterbox » Thu June 11th, 2009, 3:01 am

MLE, do you realize that if you write up a comparison of the business model of the llama industry and the publishing industry, that could be a funny and highly marketable piece of business journalism? If you do it, I'll help you find someone who will buy it as a commentary piece...

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MLE (Emily Cotton)
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 3566
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
Location: California Bay Area

Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Thu June 11th, 2009, 4:49 am

Thanks for the offer, Chatterbox, I'll think about it.

My first full-length opus was a business book: For What Its Worth: a Market Approach to Appraising Llamas. You won't find many copies of that around -- actually, I don't think there are any left, it was strictly a small-market venture and my sales listed in the high hundreds, which wasn't bad, given the size of the market at the time (1989). I inserted rather more humorous anecdotes than were wise, given the very 'small village' nature of the llama community at the time. Even without the names, you could tell who was being talked about.

I have since learned to be more tactful, and every now and then I look at that old file and wonder if I could re-purpose some bits of the thing. It came to about 70K words.

User avatar
Margaret
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 2440
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: I can't answer this in 100 characters. Sorry.
Favourite HF book: Checkmate, the final novel in the Lymond series
Preferred HF: Literary novels. Late medieval and Renaissance.
Location: Catskill, New York, USA
Contact:

Post by Margaret » Thu June 11th, 2009, 8:48 pm

I think writing good narrative nonfiction is more difficult than writing fiction. You can't make anything up! And you still have to tell a good story that comes to a satisfying finale! It's a hybrid animal between fiction and the usual sort of nonfiction, so it blends the unique difficulties involved in both types of writing. Editors sometimes ask for more detail about this, that or the other thing, and you have to say, well, there's nothing there - all the old records were probably destroyed when the French bombarded the castle in XYZ, or whatever. Sometimes I resort to speculating (Perhaps he ended his life in a monastery, or perhaps...), but that borders on cheating.

Nonfiction is easier to sell, though, which helps make up for it.
Browse over 5000 historical novel listings (probably well over 5000 by now, but I haven't re-counted lately) and over 700 reviews at www.HistoricalNovels.info

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