Why Writers Starve: An Introduction
Fifty Years Worth of Slips, Tips & Quips
J. Dennis Robinson
I was a writer from the get-go. Probably worked on an essay in the womb. My first satirical script in grammar school was called "Mr. Cleopatra." That was almost sixty years ago. In a yellowed newspaper photo of the cast in Miss Muskat's class, I am the crewcut kid in glasses holding the screenplay. Against all odds, I'm still typing.
I bagged my first weekly newspaper column as a high school freshman. Got in trouble right away. We were assigned to read the historical novel Johnny Tremain in English class and I thought it was dumb. I dissed the book in my column in the community newspaper, calling it "Toilet Tremain." Parents complained. I was summoned to the principal's office. He insisted, if I wanted my journalism career to continue, I must run all future columns through him. I was pretty sure he was too busy to read, so I complied for a few weeks. Then I stopped giving him an advance copy. The principal never mentioned it again and, mildly chastened, I wrote what I pleased.
Words clearly had power, and for a scrawny, sickly kid in a big public school, any power source would do. I couldn't beat you up, but if you wanted to beat me up, I could write that overdue essay for your Social Studies class instead. I wrote poems for the literary magazine and songs for unapproachable girls. I covered basketball games for the statewide daily and edited the school newspaper. With self-deprecating campaign posters ("Who would vote for this weirdo? You would if you want real student government!") I edged out a local football hero to become student council president. I was nominated to the prestigious Quill & Scroll, although I don't recall what that club ever did. Got so many A's in English that, when I didn't bother to show up for class, the teachers let me slide.
Back then everybody knew I was going to be a big shot author. But I am not. Today I remain a struggling artisan trying to figure out how the hell one makes a living off words. While friends my age are retiring, I'm still looking for enough work to cover next month's mortgage.
You want to be a writer. So why--you should be asking yourself by now--are you reading this blog? Because, for one, I'm still standing. I have been getting up and writing for pay, in one form or another, since the Beatles were still the Beatles. In the early days I taught writing classes, but even that was a compromise. This career eats time. It was all or nothing.
You won’t get a magic formula for success from these blogs because—spoiler alert— there is no magic formula. But in the last dozen years I have produced a dozen books. They were not self-published invisible e-books, but real books with paper pages, hard covers, sturdy spines, and copious illustrations. They are good books, every one, though not bestsellers. I am proud of every one of them. I’ve also penned a few thousand articles for which I was compensated by actual newspapers and magazines. And for the last couple of decades, I did not supplement my income working at Best Buy or driving a taxi on the side. I just wrote. And when, in lean times, my job was to deliver press releases, a walking tour spiel, video scripts, brochure text, or radio ads—well—I was still writing, sort of.
Being of a certain age, I’m here to offer a few things I've learned along the way. You're here, I assume, to pick up a few tips to boost your earning power or ease your troubled mind. There are plenty of self-help books, YouTube videos, and creative writing classes for that. For most freelance writers, the work is hard, opportunities few, and the money sucks. Back in the day, there were magazines and newspapers that actually paid a living rate for nonfiction articles. Publishers once paid advances for as-yet-unwritten books. Most independent writers I know, smart people who write real nonfiction books and articles, make from $15,000 to $25,000 annually at their craft while holding down full time jobs elsewhere. While the media focuses on rare success stories, a recent survey of self-published writers found that over half of them earned less than $500 on their latests print-on-demand books.
Maybe you can't handle the truth, but there it is. You might make a million dollars writing mediocre vampire fan fiction on your smartphone. More likely, you won't. I know colleagues who, having produced super books for major publishing houses, earned peanuts in return. And I know authors who, after paying ripoff marketing agencies, building their own author websites, and sitting for hours in bookstores have lost thousands of dollars on books that sold only a few copies. Yes, I do know a couple of talented writers who have done well. And by a couple, I mean three. And all are fiction writers.
Reality check: things are getting worse. Freelance magazine and newspaper rates have plummeted as paid work gets harder to find. I once described freelance journalism as the only job where you can arrive at work to find hundreds of people ready to do your job for free. Thanks to print-on-demand digital presses, anyone can publish a manuscript on Amazon in a single day, almost for free. Thousands of new digital books appear each week. Many of the surviving bookstores and most libraries won’t take your beloved indie book if you give it away. Only the top-grossing superstars are of interest to the last of the big-time publishing companies. Literary agents are unlikely to reply to your queries. And even if you bag a traditional publisher, you’ll likely do most of your own book promotion and marketing at your own expense. And writers are the last in line to get paid behind editors, designers, proofreaders, illustrators, printers, salespeople, distributors, shippers, retailers, and your agent--who gets fifteen percent of what ever is left. None of that matters if your book sells a million copies. Most authors are lucky to sell a few thousand. Do the math.
I live in New England where writers once thrived. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Stowe, Alcott, Twain, Frost, Salinger, Kerouac -- they all lived here. And successful writers keep coming. Dan Brown's house is only a few miles from mine. He's a nice guy who has earned millions. Stephen King lives an hour to the north in Maine. Janet Evanovich has a home in New Hampshire, well, one of her homes. They are all genre fiction writers, however, and fiction is where the money is. But even in my field of American history writing, you'll find top sellers like David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gordon Wood, Nathaniel Philbrick, and John Ellis all have ties to nearby Massachusetts.
This blog is not about, by, or for celebrity writers. It is for you and for me, the hard-working half-starving writers--the bottom 95 percent. I'm going to focus on nonfiction because that is what I know, because fiction is a crapshoot, and because there are trickles of income still to be discovered in the nonfiction field. If fiction writing is a lottery ticket, nonfiction is more like opening your own little restaurant. You feed enough people and it may feed you.
If this column helps, you’re welcome. If not, you got what you paid for. When I can carve a few hours away from the writing projects in front of me, we can chat a bit about why writers starve. Maybe, when you see how dumb I can be, you’ll feel better about the manuscript that’s been eating your life. Or maybe you’ll stop banging your head against the keyboard and get back to becoming an astronaut or a pastry chef or whatever floats your boat. My boat, I fear, is made of paper and pixels. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
(c) 2022 J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved
J. Dennis Robinson
I was a writer from the get-go. Probably worked on an essay in the womb. My first satirical script in grammar school was called "Mr. Cleopatra." That was almost sixty years ago. In a yellowed newspaper photo of the cast in Miss Muskat's class, I am the crewcut kid in glasses holding the screenplay. Against all odds, I'm still typing.
I bagged my first weekly newspaper column as a high school freshman. Got in trouble right away. We were assigned to read the historical novel Johnny Tremain in English class and I thought it was dumb. I dissed the book in my column in the community newspaper, calling it "Toilet Tremain." Parents complained. I was summoned to the principal's office. He insisted, if I wanted my journalism career to continue, I must run all future columns through him. I was pretty sure he was too busy to read, so I complied for a few weeks. Then I stopped giving him an advance copy. The principal never mentioned it again and, mildly chastened, I wrote what I pleased.
Words clearly had power, and for a scrawny, sickly kid in a big public school, any power source would do. I couldn't beat you up, but if you wanted to beat me up, I could write that overdue essay for your Social Studies class instead. I wrote poems for the literary magazine and songs for unapproachable girls. I covered basketball games for the statewide daily and edited the school newspaper. With self-deprecating campaign posters ("Who would vote for this weirdo? You would if you want real student government!") I edged out a local football hero to become student council president. I was nominated to the prestigious Quill & Scroll, although I don't recall what that club ever did. Got so many A's in English that, when I didn't bother to show up for class, the teachers let me slide.
Back then everybody knew I was going to be a big shot author. But I am not. Today I remain a struggling artisan trying to figure out how the hell one makes a living off words. While friends my age are retiring, I'm still looking for enough work to cover next month's mortgage.
You want to be a writer. So why--you should be asking yourself by now--are you reading this blog? Because, for one, I'm still standing. I have been getting up and writing for pay, in one form or another, since the Beatles were still the Beatles. In the early days I taught writing classes, but even that was a compromise. This career eats time. It was all or nothing.
You won’t get a magic formula for success from these blogs because—spoiler alert— there is no magic formula. But in the last dozen years I have produced a dozen books. They were not self-published invisible e-books, but real books with paper pages, hard covers, sturdy spines, and copious illustrations. They are good books, every one, though not bestsellers. I am proud of every one of them. I’ve also penned a few thousand articles for which I was compensated by actual newspapers and magazines. And for the last couple of decades, I did not supplement my income working at Best Buy or driving a taxi on the side. I just wrote. And when, in lean times, my job was to deliver press releases, a walking tour spiel, video scripts, brochure text, or radio ads—well—I was still writing, sort of.
Being of a certain age, I’m here to offer a few things I've learned along the way. You're here, I assume, to pick up a few tips to boost your earning power or ease your troubled mind. There are plenty of self-help books, YouTube videos, and creative writing classes for that. For most freelance writers, the work is hard, opportunities few, and the money sucks. Back in the day, there were magazines and newspapers that actually paid a living rate for nonfiction articles. Publishers once paid advances for as-yet-unwritten books. Most independent writers I know, smart people who write real nonfiction books and articles, make from $15,000 to $25,000 annually at their craft while holding down full time jobs elsewhere. While the media focuses on rare success stories, a recent survey of self-published writers found that over half of them earned less than $500 on their latests print-on-demand books.
Maybe you can't handle the truth, but there it is. You might make a million dollars writing mediocre vampire fan fiction on your smartphone. More likely, you won't. I know colleagues who, having produced super books for major publishing houses, earned peanuts in return. And I know authors who, after paying ripoff marketing agencies, building their own author websites, and sitting for hours in bookstores have lost thousands of dollars on books that sold only a few copies. Yes, I do know a couple of talented writers who have done well. And by a couple, I mean three. And all are fiction writers.
Reality check: things are getting worse. Freelance magazine and newspaper rates have plummeted as paid work gets harder to find. I once described freelance journalism as the only job where you can arrive at work to find hundreds of people ready to do your job for free. Thanks to print-on-demand digital presses, anyone can publish a manuscript on Amazon in a single day, almost for free. Thousands of new digital books appear each week. Many of the surviving bookstores and most libraries won’t take your beloved indie book if you give it away. Only the top-grossing superstars are of interest to the last of the big-time publishing companies. Literary agents are unlikely to reply to your queries. And even if you bag a traditional publisher, you’ll likely do most of your own book promotion and marketing at your own expense. And writers are the last in line to get paid behind editors, designers, proofreaders, illustrators, printers, salespeople, distributors, shippers, retailers, and your agent--who gets fifteen percent of what ever is left. None of that matters if your book sells a million copies. Most authors are lucky to sell a few thousand. Do the math.
I live in New England where writers once thrived. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Stowe, Alcott, Twain, Frost, Salinger, Kerouac -- they all lived here. And successful writers keep coming. Dan Brown's house is only a few miles from mine. He's a nice guy who has earned millions. Stephen King lives an hour to the north in Maine. Janet Evanovich has a home in New Hampshire, well, one of her homes. They are all genre fiction writers, however, and fiction is where the money is. But even in my field of American history writing, you'll find top sellers like David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gordon Wood, Nathaniel Philbrick, and John Ellis all have ties to nearby Massachusetts.
This blog is not about, by, or for celebrity writers. It is for you and for me, the hard-working half-starving writers--the bottom 95 percent. I'm going to focus on nonfiction because that is what I know, because fiction is a crapshoot, and because there are trickles of income still to be discovered in the nonfiction field. If fiction writing is a lottery ticket, nonfiction is more like opening your own little restaurant. You feed enough people and it may feed you.
If this column helps, you’re welcome. If not, you got what you paid for. When I can carve a few hours away from the writing projects in front of me, we can chat a bit about why writers starve. Maybe, when you see how dumb I can be, you’ll feel better about the manuscript that’s been eating your life. Or maybe you’ll stop banging your head against the keyboard and get back to becoming an astronaut or a pastry chef or whatever floats your boat. My boat, I fear, is made of paper and pixels. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
(c) 2022 J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved