Wow. This author has fifteen mystery novels published and makes $18,000 a year from them. (Hat tip: Collin Kelley.)
Seems like a good moment to link to poetry – an inherently non-profit activity?, a post in which I argued that no-one has a hope in hell of making any kind of a living from selling books of poetry and should seek to gain readers instead through multi-format publication which includes free provision of some of those formats.
(Related post: Nanopress publishing – avoiding the publisher’s cycle of need
Other Very Like A Whale posts on poetry publishing)
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Yep. Only way to make serious money as a freelance writer is with magazine articles — and lord knows how much longer that market will continue to be viable. Books don’t pay unless you get struck by lightning/Oprah. (My mom is a midlist nonfiction author.)
Interesting. Does that apply to poetry-themed magazine articles as well?
I kinda doubt it. Unless it’s in the New Yorker, I suppose.
Poetry is such a red-headed stepchild in the commercial context – it really should move out and reinvent itself in a more nourishing context.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/04/06/revenue-streams-2010/
John Scalzi, popular scifi writer, has done a yearly-ish series of posts on his income also.
am the author of MEMORABLE POEMS;A COLLECTION OF INSPIRING POEMS FOR YOU and am determined that one can make a living from writing .FOREVER WILL END ON THURSDAY ,very interesting in deed!
so glad to have found your blog. will now be reading your every post. I have a blog I do with a fellow poet. we have no thoughts of making any money. in the new world most art will be free: music, painting, poetry, all of it.
best things are free…but poetry?can be free,yes!but through a price….poetry is immortal
poetry is like an eagle.it cant go,it wont be free…it is here to “buy’ and be bought!
Wow.
Perhaps the problem here is referring to this person as a “mid-list” mystery writer. If the books were genuinely a quality read, there would develop a substantial following and the income that is attached to quantity. I would say that I find 1 out of every 30-40 books I read pulls me in and holds me to the end. Plus, I find that I mark pages, as I go along, where I find extraordinary strings/paragraphs to revisit.