About Books

So I cranked out 15,781 words on my young adult fantasy Quiver this weekend (I’m now up to 33,000 and change). Keep in mind that these aren’t good words or final words, just words that are making up my rough draft. There is little artistry to them at this point. It’s more like a really, really detailed outline right now than anything else.

I’ve never written a YA before, and I’m a little unsure about things — the voice, the violence level, if the plot is too hokey. I got about 25,000 words into Quiver and thought it was utter crap — so I started all over again, weaving in some scenes from the old version. And yes, I’m still thinking that the new version is crap, although perhaps not quite as smelly as what I wrote before. 

Everything was going fine on the new version … until Wheezley told me that he liked the old version better. Argh! And then, of course, I started second-guessing myself. Was the first version better? Is the new version the really craptastic one? What should I doooo?

In case you haven’t guessed by now, us writers are a crazy, paranoid, neurotic lot. Seriously. We should all be wearing straightjackets. 😈

But I’ve decided to keep going on the new version and finish the rough draft. It’s always easier to fix things if you have something to work with — no matter how craptastic the words may be. So I’ll be slogging through the rest of the rough draft over the next few weeks and probably tearing my hair out in the process …

What about you guys? What are you working on, writing-related or otherwise?

That you don’t get that $10,000 advance in one lump sum? This ain’t the lottery. You don’t get to select the payout you prefer. You’ll be getting that $10,000 over the course of a year — or maybe longer, depending on when your book is finally published.

You get a little bit of money when you sign the contract, a little more when you turn in the book, a little more when you turn in the revisions … you get the idea.

And, of course, just because you sell one book is no guarantee that you’ll sell another. None at all. Especially with publishers cutting staff and authors left and right these days.

So if you are looking to get rich quick, I say start drilling for oil in Texas. Because you probably have a better chance of making it big doing that than writing books for a living.

But if you love writing and love telling stories, then sit down in front of your computer and write. Because there is one thing in all this that’s priceless — seeing your name in print. It really does make it all worthwhile.

Jim C. Hines (whose Jig the Goblin books I like) has an interesting post up about money and writing. Go check it out.

Why am I mentioning this? Mainly, because of my cousins. They were recently in town, and whenever I see them, I always get questions about how much money I’m making on my books and when I’m going to quit my day job. Everybody seems to think that I’m getting rich or something. Trust me when I tell you that I’m not — not even close.

The book business is really not as glamorous as people think. And no, I’m not making wads of money. To illustrate this, I thought I’d do a post about where an author’s money goes. The numbers below are completely hypothetical and for illustrative purposes only. With that caveat, here goes:

$10,000: Say you sell a book, and you get an advance of $10,000. Given the economy and the way publishing is floundering right now, this is a pretty good advance — especially if you’re a debut (new) author. Your agent automatically gets 15 percent — or $1,500 — of this money. So you have $8,500 left.

$8,500: Uncle Sam is going to take about another 15 percent of what’s left after you pay your agent — $1,275. It’s a little thing called self-employment tax, and it sucks. So now, you have $7,225 left.

$7,225: Say you like to save money and you put this in the bank. You’re going to have to pay taxes on the interest that it earns. Just to make the numbers easier, let’s say that’s $25. So now, you have $7,200 left.

$7,200: Now, it’s time to do promotion. Getting bookmarks/business cards/letterhead made can easily run $1,000. Let’s say you spend that much on paper products/office supplies/etc. and another $1,000 on creating a Web site. That’s $2,000, so now you have $5,200 left.

$5,200: Now it’s time to buy ads. Depending on the size you want, a single ad can easily cost $500 — more if you want color. Let’s say you drop another $1,000 on advertising. Now, you have $4,200 left.

$4,200: You’ll probably want to travel to a conference or two when your book is out to promote it and maybe meet your editor/agent. Conferences can be expensive. Let’s budget another $2,000 for travel/hotels/food/conference fees. Now, you have $2,200 left. Do you see where this is going?

$2,200: Postage is also a major expense. You’ve got to mail out books to contest winners, bookmarks for promotion, etc. Let’s say you spend another $200 on postage — and I am being very, very conservative here just to keep the numbers even.

$2,000: Let’s say this is what you’re left with after all the taxes, expenses, etc. That $10,000 advance isn’t looking like so much now, is it?

$1,000 per month: Now, let’s consider your time. Say you write fast, and it took you about two months to write your book. So you’ve made $1,000 per month of work. Not great, but not bad, right? Wrong. Because we haven’t talked about the revisions, copy edits, and page proofs you’ve had to do for your editor.

$500 per month: Let’s say the revisions, etc. take another two months to do. So now, you’re down to making $500 for four months of work on your book — and this doesn’t even factor in all the hours you spent on promotion or gas to drive to post office or a hundred other things that crop up in an author’s life. Which brings us to this …

$0: Sadly, this is probably what you’re going to end up with out of that $10,000 advance when you consider taxes, promotion, your time, etc.

So really, being a writer is like being in a money pit. Every little thing sucks those precious dollars out of your hands. Authors write books because they love writing, not because they’re making fortunes. Almost every author I know has some sort of day job to help support themselves, including yours truly.

Anybody who thinks that writing is a quick ticket to getting rich is crazy. And us authors? We’re probably the craziest ones of all for doing it. But hey, love does strange things to people …

Got questions? I’ll answer what I can in the comments.