![]() We think of reducing everything else in their lives to the bare minimum in pursuit of their artistic ambitions. ![]() When people say that they are determined to do whatever it takes to become authors, we think of quitting jobs and working in coffee shops for minimum wage, getting by in council housing and on benefits. Maybe I could build an app or something that would bring people value and help subsidise my quest to become a published author? I write, but I’m also a software engineer. I was thinking about that a lot this week. Joanna Penn talks about this in the self-publishing context on her podcast all the time. It seems to be true across the board: writers leverage their unique skill sets to diversify their sources of income to stay in the game regardless of whether they sell any books. ![]() Some are public speakers, and others have plain old jobs. Some writers run community events and writing groups. Some writers choose to teach, others sell courses or editing services. Why would writers as successful as these want to do anything apart from writing full-time? Isn’t that the dream? John and Hank Green run several businesses and YouTube channels. Ernest Hemingway made money as a foreign correspondent during the wars. Charles Dickens started out as a journalist and later on went on gruelling public reading tours (back when travel wasn’t sitting in a business class seat watching Netflix). Throughout the history of literature, writers had relied on other ways of earning a living when they were starting out and later on to shield themselves from the fluctuating book sales. Now lukewarm is the best you can hope for. You drink and tweet and regret it instantly, but the tabloids hang on to it. It might be the best thing ever written, but then you say something incredibly stupid out of sheer sleep deprivation as you are doing the media circuits and surviving on 20 cups of coffee a day. Nobody can tell with any certainty if a book is going to be a success. ![]() Your first book might sell loads of copies. In reality, things rarely work like that.īook publishing is a slow-moving and highly uncertain business for writers. That’s the romantic idea of being a writer. You get paid, which means that you can write more books and people will buy more of them. ![]()
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