Recently, I asked a new acquaintance of mine — who, as a published author with one book to his name and another in the works, surely must operate on a plane higher than my own — the best place to buy his book. His answer surprised me.
"Who gives a shit? I won't see any money," he said. "Steal it from the library."
I was thrown, but assumed this was a special case, a jadedness caused by Amazon's cutthroat rapaciousness and the niche market for the memoirs of an Iraq War vet living in the Tenderloin.
Then I remembered that another friend's book, released last year in time for the holiday shopping bonanza and priced at $15, netted her a little under $1 per sale. And then I remembered the reason why I missed meeting up with yet another friend — a published poet who is "critically acclaimed" as well as "award-winning." The night I was free coincided with his shift, tending bar.
None of the writers I know make their money writing, I realized. And this is common. In publishing, the norm is a "hustle cocktail": a mix of teaching and editing, along with side gigs completely unrelated to the art. This, while constantly marketing and selling yourself and your work — and, in between all of the above, finding time to write.
So, how do you do it? Aside from becoming inured to rejection, the would-be writer needs to be prepared for lean times, relentless self-promotion, and an irregular lifestyle, as several poets, fiction writers, essayists, and journalists at the city's longtime "authors' accelerator," the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, told me.
Temper your expectations (and stop eating out).
"It's really hard to make money with fiction," concedes Ethyl Rohan, whose first novel, The Kingdom Keeper, was just purchased by St. Martin's Press and will be published in 2017. She scored an advance on it — a noteworthy rarity. (Even rarer is the sizable advance; only a few Grotto writers have seen money up front in the six figures.) And finally making money, when it does come, can take a long time. It took Dorothy Hearst 10 years to write her Wolf Chronicles series — published by Simon & Schuster — including six years on the first volume alone, with the final year working on nothing aside from finishing the book ("I had good rent," she says now.)
For writers starting out, remember that the bar is low: A few hundred dollars for a short story is considered an excellent haul; some literary journals pay only in contributors' copies. One Grotto writer's best year ever from writing was 2013, when $30,000 came in. Keep in mind this is an art, like studio painting or music — and it pays commensurately.
#Brands are important.
"If you want to be competitive in this industry, you're really going into business," says memoirist and essayist Lizette Wanzer, "and that means you must present yourself as a business."
You'll need to maintain a professional website and a constant presence on the local literary event circuit, handing out professional-looking business cards and making sure your name is repeated often enough to stay in editors' minds. It means constant marketing and exposure — and as a writer running your own business, it means you have to do it all yourself. "I wish the work could stand alone" is a common gripe, but the reality is that it does not. Good work needs even better promotion.
Quit your job... but not all of them.
After a career at Kaiser Permanente left her financially secure but creatively starved, Laurie Ann Doyle quit, living off her savings while she established herself as a writer. Wanzer also worked in healthcare — and still does, adding to her writing income with a part-time job as a web contractor. That gives her the flexibility to take on residencies and apply for grants. When that is slow, she eats and pays rent by participating in focus groups.
"In between gigs, when you're not sure where the next dollar is coming from, you have to be resourceful," she says. "That might mean temp agencies and staffing agencies." Once an author's career is off the ground — and even long after he or she has become a household name, many writers rely on teaching. Tobias Wolff is still at Stanford, Joyce Carol Oates is still at Princeton. Indeed, a tenure-track professorship is probably the best financial security a writer can hope for. (It's much, much kinder than adjunct wages, at least).
Remember that it gets better... and worse.
Laura Fraser's first book was a runaway success. Losing It: False Hopes and Fast Profits in the Diet Industry was published by Random House, reached The New York Times bestseller list, saw her make the rounds of TV talk shows, and netted her a grand total of $150,000. Magazine work flowed in. Her follow-up book did okay, but not quite as well. A stint in publishing, setting up a platform for e-books, led to her "digging myself into a financial hole," she says. "It just turns out that people who will spend $3 on a latte without thinking have a huge aversion to spending $3 on a short book." And now, at 54, "I can't get a fucking editor at [name of publication removed on request] to return my phone calls ... It seems like everybody's career goes up and down like a roller coaster." And once a project is completed, you must be prepared to start over again from near-scratch.
Have a penis.
Unfortunately, the patriarchy is alive and well in publishing. In 2014, according to VIDA's annual gender survey, The New Yorker ran nearly twice as many articles by men than by women — and that was one of the magazine's most equitable years. In 2011, the gender gap was closer to 3-to-1. "Sexism definitely turns up," says Fraser, who relates an unfortunate incident with an editor at a well-known local magazine who wanted to pay her half her normal rate. His rationale: "Well, you've only written for women's magazines." There is a writer at the Grotto who, when pitching stories to a certain magazine, masks her gender by only using her initials. Things may be difficult for struggling male writers, too, but women have it as bad in publishing as they do in the corporate world.
Make friends in Hollywood.
If there is any lottery-size jackpot lurking in writing, it's in television and film. New York Times bestselling writer Julia Scheeres's second book, the Jonestown massacre account A Thousand Lives, is currently being shopped around Hollywood (thanks mostly to one unnamed actor who wants to play Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones), which would mean a potential payday bigger than any stint on the bestsellers' list. But for now, Scheeres — a successful and lauded writer — and her family are renters in Berkeley. "It's a struggle." she says.
"You have to make sacrifices," Wanzer says. "If you're someone who doesn't do well with uncertainty, and you can't sustain yourself in that kind of economy, then this probably isn't the profession for you."
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