Face It Writers Make Less Now

Face It Writers Make Less Now If you are in this business full-time, and attempt to keep up with the pace of the current publishing paradigm, you cant help but feel depressed. Writers make less now than a decade ago. And no, it does not appear to be a temporary slump. Writers in Canada make less than in 1998 thestar.com/entertainment/books/2015/05/29/writers-in-canada-make-less-than-in-1998.html Authors incomes collapse to abject levels theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/08/authors-incomes-collapse-alcs-survey We can argue the reasons why, but I see it as two-fold: Treasure in hand 1) Everybody can publish today. 2) Readers have become accustomed to deals, so the average cost of a book has seriously declined. Nobody pays $25 for a hardback anymore. Not when a reader can grab an ebook for $1.99. But writers tend to be their own worst enemy. It feels better to sell 1,000 books for $.99 each than 100 for $9.99. We think were more powerful at that 1,000 number, but what weve failed to see is that weve driven our reputation down to a level thats hard to recover from. Yes, I understand you can have one-day and two-day offers. I understand Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Countdown Deals attract lower priced sales. But with most writers pricing down their material, we all earn less. And with so many writers in the mix, we all sell less. My own publisher talks about how publishers across the board are earning less, which drives them to promote individual authors less, no longer provide print ARCs, and decrease advances. On the freelance front, $1/word was once the professional rate. When FundsforWriters was started, I scolded writers for accepting less than 20 cents/word. Today thats decent pay. Writing mills came into the picture, making new writers think they could gather experience doing click rate writing. Then people started writing internationally, and writers from some countries easily underbid writers in others. One So whats an author to do? 1) Write steadily and often. The prolific writers makes more money no matter the pay. 2) Stand firm for a respectable wage. Turn down bad offers. Set your floor. 3) Dont settle for a lesser publisher. Hold out for a reputable publisher or learn to self-publish and consider making your own success. 4) Be unique in your promotion. Do not use the mass promo offers everyone else uses. 5) Promote daily, a little at a time, but dont sound like the next guy. The slow-but-sure mentality wins this race, and its a darn marathon for sure. But there are sneakers and training programs for those marathons, and they await you. You just have to decide to put them on.