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This is like printing a piece on what pensioners get per week, citing the Queen as a typical example. https://twitter.com/Danoosha/status/1303223792341340160">https://twitter.com/Danoosha/...
I really hate bullshit like this. I& #39;ve spent the summer watching the @Soc_of_Authors give out emergency handouts to authors left without any resources or income this year because of Covid. I& #39;ve heard their stories. Being an author is, for most, an underpaid, ungrateful job.
The average full-time author earns around £10,000 a year from writing. That& #39;s a lot less than the minimum wage. And yet, they are constantly forced to challenge the public& #39;s perception of writing as being an easy way of making money.
It& #39;s a dangerous perception, both for the authors and for people wanting to enter the profession. Every day I see someone on social media who has given up their actual paying job to write, in the hope of a better life, and my heart aches, because that& #39;s not how it works.
But thanks to bullshit pieces like this, I can guarantee that some people will do just that today. So, to clarify: unless they& #39;re writing for a magazine, authors aren& #39;t paid by the word. They get an advance, if they& #39;re lucky, and royalties.
The advance is usually split into three: one part on signature of the contract; another on release of the hardback; another on release of the paperback. Typically, there might be intervals of about a year each between these payments.
Royalties vary; typically beween 7% and 12% of the sale price of the book. But authors don& #39;t get royalties until the advance has all been paid back in sales. This can take years, if it happens at all. Meanwhile, unless the author does something else, there& #39;s no other income.
That& #39;s why, although some authors do eventually make money from writing, the ones who make a good living from it are in a minority, and even in those cases, it usually takes a loooooong time.
