I was reminded of a single page in “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”; specifically, the section where Dave Eggers breaks down his $100,000 advance on sales from his publisher. He then lists all his expenses. In the end the author banked a little less than half. It wasn’t bad money — just not the “I bet Dave Eggers totally owns a Jaguar”-type of income I expected. I mean, his name was on the cover of a book! He must be rich.
That honesty was refreshing and voyeuristic. I always said if I ever had a chance, I’d make a similar gesture. As a person learning about writing and publishing, there was something helpful about Eggers’ transparency. So here is my stab at similar honesty: the sugar bowls full of cocaine, bathtubs full of whiskey, semi-nude bookstore employees scattered throughout my bedroom tale of bestseller riches.
This is what it’s like, financially, to have the indie book publicity story of the year and be near the top of the bestseller list.
Drum roll.
$12,000.
Hi-hat crash.
From here.
Writing, people. It’s not for the faint of heart. Or those who want to make any appreciable amount of money whatsoever.
I’m reminded of this interview with writer Neal Pollack, about how little money you actually make being a critical/hipster darling, and how he’s actually trying to make writing work for him financially now:
It’s basically like I have a new publisher, and its this new model because I’m not getting these huge advances for them, but they’re publishing them very quickly. This isn’t an exact number, but imagine they give me a $20,000 advance, which is a pretty normal advance for a book from a mainstream publisher. But that’s not a lot of money when you have stretch it out for two and a half years. But for four or five months, when you’re doing other work, suddenly, it becomes more of a viable financial proposition. I recognize that not every writer is able to churn out a novel every four or five months more than once, but I am. I have journalism training and I have written a bunch of books and I have been practicing. I’m ready to roll. And my plan—my plans always seem to be thwarted—but my plan is to just pound out as many books as I can and make them as good as possible and build a library on Amazon. This a quote from A.J. Liebling that says, “I can write better than anybody who can write faster and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.” So I want to try and apply that math to my own life. Am I as good a writer as Michael Chabon or George Saunders? No. But I can get my books out there quickly, you know?
It makes me sad, to think that we’re in a world where you have to be fast and prolific in order to make a living, instead of being good. But thinking about it, that’s pretty much how I’ve built my career in writing: Just continually putting things out there as quickly as possible and as well as I can.