Can authors survive financially on book sales?

(Reasons why we probably can't and why that's okay)

I read a really interesting piece on how much authors make and why it’s a terrible time to be trying to survive on royalties alone and planned to share it in This Week’s Miscellany but my thoughts ran so long that I decided to make it the beginning of a series for my generous paid subscribers.

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As a published author and now a full-time editor, I get emails or DMs come in every week asking me how to get started with a writing career, how to get a book published, and how to make an income as an author. Because I have four children and a spouse who likes to hang out with me sometimes rather than watch me sit by the light of my laptop 24 hours a day, I generally can’t reply to these inquiries. It would be another full-time job. But as someone who was once starting out with all of these questions, I did greatly benefit from more established writers sharing their wisdom. So I’m sharing my experience as an author and since we’re talking numbers, it’s kind of personal information which is why it’s behind a paywall.

In the series we’ll be covering:

-Fantasy author life vs. reality author life

-How do advances work?

-How much do authors make from book sales?

-How many copies does the average book sell?

-Can you survive on royalties alone?

-What do authors need to do beyond writing a really good book?

-What are some ways to actually survive with a livable income as a writer?

Last week I read this very interesting piece that we’ll discuss in more detail about how difficult it is to make a living as a writer which is definitely worth a read. But the following passage resonated:

A few years ago, a literary agent told me that “writing books is not a career,” which didn’t quite compute in the moment. Of course writing books is a career! I thought. What this agent meant was: writing books is not the kind of career that’s also a job. Without any other revenue streams, it’s highly unlikely that someone could make ends meet or support a family by writing novels.