Where's the Money - Alternative Author Income

Girl cat in a sunny spot for tax because this will be a short blog post. 

In order to diversify one's money-making schemes as an author, one must first be making money as an author. 

Making money as an author. Haha. Who told you I make money as an author? Perhaps I did at one time. Currently, the cash comes in the door because I picked up a gig as a technical writer. Boring af but it pays the bills. Other than that, all of my effort goes toward trying to get a book written, edited, and out the door in the fragments of time outside of the day job and the demands of family. 

Plenty of people in the writing world have made fantastic alternate income streams for themselves. I pay for some of the services offered via those streams. But honestly. I'd like to get back in the swing of being an author and maybe being paid a little bit before contemplating other business opportunities. Maybe I lack imagination, but I do feel like I might ought to nail the titular entrepreneurship effort first.

Book-Related Income: Having a Platform of Monetary Value

 This Week's Topic: How Do I Make Book-Related Income Not from Book Sales?

Uhm.

{sucks on upper lip}

I don't.

As Jeffe mentioned on Sunday, this week's topic is prompted by the 2023 Author's Guild Author Income Survey. The survey defines "other author-related income" as being earned from work that includes: "editing, blogging, teaching, speaking, book coaching, copy writing and journalism."

No one on the SFF Seven gets paid for blogging here nor does the blog generate revenue. Yes, that's the reason you're not inundated by ads and newsletter subscription pop-ups. We freely share our experiences with other authors who might be feeling a little lost or a lot of frustrated--and every emotion in between--because we value our community and can commiserate with the assorted challenges of publishing. Since there is no one way of being an author, our dear readers get up to seven different perspectives on how/why each of us has approached a particular aspect of the craft or business.

Why am I not pursuing the alternate-income avenue? Do I not like money? Pfft. I'm not yet at the stage of having the bona fides to establish a platform of monetary value. For the time being, my attention is focused on writing the books to build a backlist that produces the sales that would allow me to feel as though I have sufficient success and insights of value to prospective students from which I could craft a for-fee class/workshop. I look forward to the day I can do that. No, really. Although I'm an introvert, I love public speaking and have led many workshops in my non-writer lives since I was a yewt.  (Long-time readers of this blog may recall I wanted to be an actor when I grew up. To me, public speaking is acting while educating through engagement.)

One day. Yep. One day a KAKler workshop will be a thing. {evil laugh}