5th July 2025
The reality is, of course, somewhat different. The vast majority of authors worldwide, (especially fiction authors), don’t ever make any meaningful amounts of money from their writing, even when they are published, leaving them dejected and disillusioned with the whole writing process.
When starting out on our writing careers, we all automatically think about the successes – the J K Rowlings, the Robert Ludlums, the Dan Browns and many others…The list seems endless. However, for every successful author on this list, the ones who got lucky, (and yes, even with good writers, luck plays a huge part in it), there are thousands of authors out there who made nothing.
Before you decide that you’re going to be a successful author and make millions just from tapping away at a keyboard now and then, it’s worth thinking about how much competition you actually have out there and how much work you will really have to put in.
So, here are ten tips for writers grounded in reality:
Rather than writing books, get a job with a paying magazine or newspaper. Of course, it isn’t easy, but if you’re actually looking for a career as a writer, you stand more chance of making a living this way than by writing books. Once you’ve made a name for yourself and established your reputation, you may even get a book deal and if you’re famous enough it may even help your sales.
Get famous for doing something else and then publish a memoir. Of course, many people waste their whole lives trying to become famous for its own sake, and it relies on luck as much as anything else. However, if you’re famous enough already, the chances are that your book will sell no matter how bad it is, and your chances of success by this method are undoubtedly just as good as most new authors. You only have to look at all those ‘celebrity’ memoirs outselling genuinely good books to realise that fame sells better than talent.
Write non-fiction rather than fiction as that often sells better, especially if your book contains useful information that will help readers do a specific thing. Self-help books and books giving advice to desperate wannabe writers tend to sell the best, (even if the author has only ever written books giving advice to wannabe writers).
Don’t concentrate too much on getting into brick-and-mortar bookstores unless you have a deal with a reasonably large traditional publisher. If you want to see your book on the shelves of your local bookstore, the best thing to do is befriend the staff (and management) of your local independent bookstore and ask them to stock a couple of copies, (assuming that your book is in Gardner’s catalogue), or write a local history/local interest book. Even Waterstones will sometimes stock local interest books if approached by the author in person, but only for that specific area. In other words, if you write a local interest book about Leeds, don’t expect any Waterstones in any other towns or cities to stock it. There are forms that can be filled in with larger chains like Waterstones asking them to stock the book but the fact is that they will not stock it unless they think that it is going to sell, no matter how nicely you ask them. They are in business, first and foremost, to make a profit, not to risk those profits by ‘taking a chance on a new, unknown author. There are thousands of books published in the UK every month, many of them published by the big five, and it is very rarely that a big bookstore chain will even consider stacking your book unless you can guarantee them a profit.
Don’t Look down your nose at e-book sales. I know that many authors (especially new ones) are only interested in print books because they think that makes them a ‘proper’ writer. I understand that writers like to see a physical, printed version of their work, (and of course, with the advent of print-on-demand, it’s not that difficult or expensive to get your book into print). The fact is that a much better indicator of what makes a ‘proper’ author is if they sell books, irrespective of the format. If you’re a new and relatively unknown author, the chances are that nearly all of your sales will be e-books. E-books are considerably easier and cheaper to produce than print books and you can make a much bigger profit on the sale of an e-book than a print book, even when the e-book price is considerably lower.
It is worth noting the difference in profit margins for different kinds of book sales for self-publishers using the main print-on-demand and e-book platforms:
Amazon eBook: Cover price: £3.99. Royalty Rate from Amazon 70%. Royalty per copy: £2.76 (The few pence difference between 70% of the cover price and the actual payment £2.76 covers delivery of the eBook. Yes, there are actually some costs involved in sending an eBook electronically, and it can vary a few pence, depending on the file size of the eBook).
Amazon paperback: Cover price: £8.99. Royalty rate from Amazon 60%. Print cost (deducted from the 60% royalty): £4.17. Royalty per copy: £1.22.
Let’s compare this with Ingram Spark, the most effective Print On Demand service for making your book available to Bookstores:
Ingram Paperback: Cover price: £8.99. Minus Retailer Discount set to 40%* : (£3.60) , which leaves: £5.39, minus print cost (£4.97), leaving: £0.42. Royalty rate (between 60% - 70%, depending on region – so let’s be optimistic and assume 70%), leaves a royalty per copy of about: £0.29.
If you’re a self-published author, or are published through a small independent publisher, Amazon is your friend. We are constantly told that Amazon is some giant corporate Devil, killing off independent bookshops and taking over the world by destroying the High Street. Of course, this is utter nonsense. This one company, however large and far-reaching cannot realistically be held responsible for the shopping habits of the modern world. If people decide to shop online for the convenience of being able to order a massive range of items from books to electricals and home décor, in their lunch break at work, on their mobile phone, and have the items delivered to their door, this isn’t because any one company is somehow inherently evil. If you want to blame someone because your local high street doesn’t have an indie bookstore, you’d be better off looking to a) the consumers who don’t go into town to buy books, or who only buy second-hand, and b) the big brick-and-mortar bookstore chains who have priced independents out of the markets, (why go to an indie bookstore and pay £8.99 for a book by an author you’ve never heard of when you can go to The Works and get 3 for £5?). The fact about Amazon, (at least as far as indie publishing goes), is that they have made it possible for self-published authors and small publishers to put books in front of an audience without having to spend a fortune. The vast majority of books that are published globally (including books published by big publishers) do not make a profit and there is no sure-fire way of knowing whether a book by a new author will be a success. Big publishing houses therefore only accept books for publication that they feel stand a good chance of making them a profit, not books that they think are good, you understand, just books that they think will make a profit. With the advent of Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and print on demand services, it is now possible for small publishers to take a risk on publishing books based on whether they think the book deserves to be available, not just on their return on investment. In this way, small publishers like ourselves can now afford help authors develop their craft over time, irrespective of what the sales figures are for their initial books
Be prolific: The most important thing that you can do to increase your chances of making a profit. Very few authors (even new authors published by major publishing houses) make more than pocket change from their first, (or even second), book. The best way to increase your chances of making anything from writing fiction, (other than writing for paid fiction magazines like ‘People’s Friend’), is to write a series in a popular genre. By the time you have written three or four books in a series (if it’s good), you stand a reasonable chance of making a useful amount of money (though it will still probably not be enough for you to give up your day job). If you can only manage one 60,000 word novel per year, it will take a long time for your book series to gain traction. So, what do we mean by being prolific? To be realistic, writing 500 words per day, every day, should be considered your absolute minimum, and any editing, tweaking etc. should be done in addition to your 500 words per day. If 500 words seems like a lot to do in a day, please bear in mind that it amounts to just under one A4 page of 12 point text. Hardly a grind, even if you have a 12 hour a day job, and considerably less writing than most of us did in a day when we were at middle school. 500 words a day equates to 182,000 words per year, so about three 60,000 word books in a series per year. I know a lot of authors these days like to churn out massive doorstep sized volumes, but they won’t necessarily sell any better than a readable 60,000 page novel, especially in crime, thriller, romance genres. (Most of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels ran to about this length, for instance and they were quite popular, even before the film franchise began). If you can’t manage 500 words a day, and you’re not famous enough to have a guaranteed audience, your chances of writing for profit are pretty slim. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t write, it just means that your writing will, in all probability, never be more than a hobby or a side-line.
Build your own audience by interacting with potential readers, either with an email list, personal appearances, or on social media. This means genuinely interacting with your potential readers. They aren’t going to warm to you if all you ever post is adverts for your latest book. Don’t rely on publishers to do this for you, whether they are a tiny independent or one of the big five. The smaller publishers don’t have the resources to advertise you widely and the bigger publishers feel that they don’t have to. Sure, some of the larger ones will pay to advertise their big name authors because they know that all they have to do is tell the public they’ve got a book out and their fans will buy it, but if you’re new and don’t have a track record, they’re not going to use up their cut of any potential profits on advertising an unknown author.
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Don’t be too proud to take advice. I know how it is: You’ve spent ages on that manuscript, you’ve read it through, edited it, honed it to perfection. You just know that it’s perfect…and then some editor wants you to make changes. They advise you to cut some of your beautiful, oh-so-perfect words. What do they know about it? Actually, if they work in the publishing industry, the chances are they know a lot. If they say that the gratuitous and explicit sex scene in chapter two of your adventure novel sounds clumsy and uncomfortable and not suitable for readers of adventure, they’re probably right. If they’re from a publishing company that releases the kind of work that you’re pitching, they probably have a good idea of what their readers are looking for. If you’re after a deal, swallow your pride and take their advice. Or don’t; it’ll be your book that they turn down. Wherever possible, take advice, not just from editors but from well read beta-readers, if you can find them. The only time I feel you should ignore this advice is if you’re a very prolific pulp fiction author, and when I say very prolific, I mean ‘Edgar Wallace prolific’, and you’re producing a new novel every month. Even then, a trusted beta-reader is a godsend for spotting the huge errors and plot holes that are surprisingly easy for authors to miss.
Don’t wait for the perfect time or place to write, it will never come if you sit around waiting for it. As writers, we’re constantly advised to have a special writing place where we can sit without distractions and allot a specific time each day to make the magic happen and that’s great. It’s great to have that special place, whether it’s a private study in the attic, or a desk in a quiet corner of the house. By all means get one, but don’t (as many would-be authors do), use it as an excuse not to do any writing today just because you haven’t had the chance to sit at your desk. If you’re working a 12 hour shift and you know that you’ll be too tired to sit at your desk and write, you should still be producing your 500 word minimum during your lunch break, your commute to and from work…anywhere. You have to get the word count in if you’re going to finish the work. It doesn’t matter whether you get your words down in a notebook, a voice-recorder, your phone or wherever. You can always go to your special place to type up your work neatly when you do have the time later.