Read on Twitter
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
I really hate bullshit like this. I'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'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's a lot less than the minimum wage. And yet, they are constantly forced to challenge the public's perception of writing as being an easy way of making money.
It'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'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're writing for a magazine, authors aren't paid by the word. They get an advance, if they'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'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's no other income.
That'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.
