Deborah Cooke: Author

One of the questions that is asked most frequently at writing workshops is “when can I quit my day job?” This is a reasonable question. People who are writing books in the evenings seldom have jobs as novelists. (Where are those jobs? I want one!) They often are doing something else and dream of the day they can quit their day job and write full time.

Now, becoming a full time writer has always been a bit of a long shot, mainly because such a high percentage of aspiring writers never sell a book. Of those who sell a first book, a very very very low percentage sell a second book. And to be a working writer, you need to consistently sell books over time, one after the other after the other. There apparently are only a small number of such people in the population, people who have enough stories and enough energy to continue telling them. As a result of this, becoming a full time writer remains a dream for many aspiring writers.

In recent years, though, there has increasingly been talk that writers can NEVER quit their day jobs. The prevailing notion in these times is that it is foolish for an author to imagine that he or she could ever quit the day job to write full time. This is borne out by the fact that many many working writers I know continue to work full time. (I have no idea how they do this, but that’s another blog post altogether.)

On the one hand, this seems extremely reasonable. The book market is smaller. Advances are lower. The story is that authors (other than famous NYT bestselling authors) can’t have expectations in terms of income in a risky market.

On the other hand, this conclusion makes absolutely no sense. Think for a moment of all the other players in the publishing game. An agent, an editor, a cover artist, a copy editor, a publicist, a layout designer, a proofreader, a personal assistant, a virtual assistant, a website designer – all of these people can reasonably expect to earn a living in publishing. Just not writers. (Or at least people won’t laugh out loud at their ambition to earn a living doing what they do.) I’m not for a minute suggesting that these people don’t have key skills to contribute to the publishing process. They do. But notice that the fuel that makes this massive economic engine run is books, and yet the people who create those books are the people who can’t expect to earn a living from publishing.

Doesn’t that sound crazy to you?

The fact is that this perspective is comparatively new. Once upon a time, when I sold my first book in 1992, there were a lot of working writers. There were, of course, famous writers who made lots of money (there still are) but there were also working writers. Established midlist writers and many category writers earned a living wage. Many of them (in romance) wrote three books a year or so and earned $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Some of them made a lot more. These were people who did sell that first book, then a bunch of books after that. They were in that minority who could write book after book, and over time, their numbers added up. A portion of a working writer’s income came in royalties, which are paid later than advances, so the prevailing wisdom was to wait until you had a number of books in print and in production – maybe 8, maybe 10 – before quitting your day job to write full time. It wasn’t a question of the cash flow existing – it was a case of waiting to step into the royalty stream and maybe proving that you could sell over and over and over again.

It wasn’t a question of making decent money once you did.

Not only is this example in 1992 dollars instead of 2011 dollars, but these writers had much lower expenses. Agents at that time charged 10%, not 15%, of gross earnings, plus many category authors didn’t have agents. Authors didn’t maintain websites. No one did book trailers, had a personal assistant, spent time on Facebook or Twitter. Very few authors did mailings or other author promotion (like advertising), and those who went to conferences went to socialize as much as to promote their books. In genre, authors seldom went on book tour – any author sent on book tour went at the expense of the publishing company. So, you’re comparing $50K to $100K in 1992 dollars with about half of that in 2011 dollars for the same amount of work published at the same level – except that the 2011 dollars have a whole lot of expenses to be paid, too. Hmm.

In the past fifteen years, there have been a lot of changes in publishing. Publishers have become enormous conglomerates, which means that they have expenses to cover and costs to amortize. Agents now charge 15%. Authors are expected to do a great deal of the promotion for their own books – if they don’t, there will be none or close to it. So, in a way, much of the revenue to deal with these changes has come from authors – either from paying them less, charging them more or offloading more expense to them.

When you consider that this entire business would cease to exist without writers, that doesn’t seem a good plan, does it?

We can’t undo the decisions of the past, or change the current book market, or otherwise turn back the clock – but the fact remains the publishing has ended up in an interesting place. Will it be a watershed or a crossroads? Will authors stop writing books? Only time will tell.

One thing has already changed, and I’m convinced that it’s related to this financial reality. Part of the reason that digital self-publishing has exploded in the past year is technology. It’s possible to do it now and do it well. Another reason is that consumers are ready for digital books. Many of them have readers and are actively searching for content. But no publishing platform works without content, and authors have uploaded a lot of content to these digital platforms. I believe this is the main reason for its success – and that one of the big reasons authors have taken to digital self-publishing is that it re-awakens the dream of quitting the day job. Will digital self-publishing make this possible for lots of working writers? Stand by! There certainly are some writers who have achieved financial independence in the short term with this technology.

What do you think? Are you an aspiring writer who longs to quit your day job? Are you a published writer who would like to quit your day job? How do you think writers can achieve financial independence? Tell me what you make of all of this!