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Writers Pay

Old 01-25-03, 03:30 AM
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Writers Pay

I was just curious...I am wondering how much the average writer makes?

I just saw a movie, MOVERN CALLER, where the heroine takes the manuscript her dead boyfriend wrote and published under her name. She submitted it, unsolicited, and got 100,000 pounds for it. It just got me thinking how much writers really make?? I am not so much talking about like the prolific giants like Criton and Clancy and so on (although I would be curious to their remuneration is) but I mean more so the average novelist???
Old 01-25-03, 04:40 AM
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You would have to be very successful or have a good number of books in print and selling regularly to make a living wage: for most writers their craft is a not their main source of income although they may be in a writing-related main job, of course.

Some time ago I did see some figures and the average annual royalty was very low indeed; low thousands at very best I would say if we are talking paperbacks. There is the question of the initial advance but this may be all that is received if the sales don't actually cover what has already been paid to you. This is what I have read elsewhere concerning the science-fiction market in the UK:
First novels often don't even earn out their initial advance. The way I heard it, publishers pushing a new writer expect to make a loss on book one, break even on book two, and maybe cover the cumulative loss with the profits from book three. If you're not profitable by book four, you're in trouble.
Maybe I will find some links concerning this later but one way of looking at the question is to consider the percentage royalty and the average sales of any novel. Perhaps the median sales figure would be better because that might remove the possibly-distorting effect of the "best sellers".

Of course I have been reading some Ian Banks latesly and was looking inside the front cover at the reprint history. Some or all of his books seem to be reprinting almost every year. If you take an average paperback printrun in the UK of 20,000 and an average royalty of, say 50p, then he might be making £10,000 a book a year. And he has about 20 books in print. These are very much back-of-the-envelope figures, and ignore worldwide sales, but it is nice to think that there are a few successful writer out there!

Last edited by benedict; 01-25-03 at 04:45 AM.
Old 01-25-03, 08:38 AM
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Most authors get a royalty of around 10% of the cover price of a book. So if a hardback sells for $25, the author will get around $2.50 for each book sold.

A succesful author might sell 40,000 copies in hardback, which translates to about $100,000.

Obviously, the big names sell much more and make millions. Most writers make very little.
Old 01-27-03, 04:49 PM
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I know nothing about what writers get paid but in "On Writing" Stephen King says that he got $400,000 for the paperback rights to Carrie (His first novel)


Of course I may be mistaken.
Old 01-27-03, 05:35 PM
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According to Publisher's Weekly, there were approximately 15,000 authors who published work in the year 2000.

Of those, approximately 200 made over $50,000.

The average annual income for those 15,000 authors in 2000 was $6800.

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