Writing Timeline

Back in 2015, when I was writing The Mars Strain, my dream was to retire from my lab job and become a full-time writer after I had ten books in my backlist. Fast-forward a few years and, faced with a high-stress job and a chronic disease, I made the choice to retire from the corporate world—without a single published book to my name! 

What about my dream to write full-time? It was still there and even though the circumstances weren’t what I’d planned, I held on to it tight. 

James and KAK both shared about the insane healthcare costs in the US. It’s a fact that weighs heavily on me as I easily take up about 20% of my husband’s income. I’m incredibly blessed to have a partner who whole heartedly believes in our vows: for richer—for poorer, in sickness and in health. Without his support I wouldn’t be writing and without his full-time job with benes…well, let’s just say the stress may have taken me. 

Like Jeffe said yesterday: plan and budget…and then add a few years to that timeline. Being a full-time writer can be one of the most rewarding choices! But, as with anything, don’t go into it blind. If you’ve decided to become a writer, no matter how much time you’re able to devote to it, I hope it brings you joy and that you quickly learn what took me so long to figure out: your worth is not tied to what you create. 

Letting go of the guilt and ties of self-worth to my writing has been freeing. Writing once again brings me happiness and is actually therapeutic. I believe writing came to me at a time I needed it, not when I planned for it, but I'm learning to embrace things as they come. 

Do you have a full or part time job along with your writing? Do you have a 10 year plan?  

Three Things I Did to Sustain a Full-time Writing Career

The audiobook of BRIGHT FAMILIAR is now available! And GREY MAGIC in audio will be out very soon!! 

This week at the SFF Seven our topic is: Being a full-time writer – is it your dream? How do you pay for life and write, too?

In this instance we're defining "full-time writer" as someone who doesn't have a day job or other paying occupation that competes with writing. Most of us - unless we marry money or inherit a trust fund - continue to work jobs even after our first books are published. Sometimes for a LONG time after that. For myself, I continued to have essentially two careers for just over twenty years after my first publication. 

I worked in environmental consulting while all the while carving out time and energy to write. I kept waiting for my writing income to match my day-job salary - even not figuring in benefits! - and it never got there. Eventually life made the decision for me: my primary project got axed, our team dissolved, and I was laid off with decent severance. 

And, as it was absolutely my dream and my goal, I made the decision to try to have only one career at that point. 

It hasn't been easy! KAK's post from yesterday about being exacting with a budget is super important. This is especially true if, like her, you have only yourself to count on for income. Or if, like me, you are the primary breadwinner for your family. When authors give advice on managing finances as a full-time writer, it behooves you to pay attention to what other financial help they have. It might not be a trust fund, but having a spouse with a steady salary (and benefits!) goes a long way. Other authors live on retirement income or other, similar sources. 

So, how have I done it? 

1) Meticulous budgeting. 

As much as I can, I budget a quarter at a time. Writing income is volatile and, unless you're making buckets of it, you can't count on being able to pay the bills with income from a single month as you can with a regular paycheck. As KAK mentions, you can't figure your disposable income by simply subtracting your expenses from that month's income. You may need that "leftover" money for next month, or the month after. The financial gymnastics require creativity and flexibility.

2) Tracking sales

Data is everything! You can't afford to be only a dreamy creative. You have to wear your business hat and crunch the data from your royalty reports. You have to be ready to be stern with yourself and pay attention to which efforts generate income and which don't. You may find you can't afford those passion projects if your writing is what puts food on the table. OR, that you can afford them only if other projects are paying the bills.

3) Self-Publishing

If writing income is volatile, then income from traditional publishing has the lowest evaporation temperature. It comes, it goes - often on an annual or semi-annual basis. Quarterly is likely the most frequently you'll get paid, and every royalty check is a surprise! Again, unless they're cutting you BIG checks, it likely won't be enough to live on. This is why so many trad-pubbed authors also teach or have other side gigs. Self-publishing provides monthly income. Yes, it fluctuates, but you can also track sales and predict how much money will arrive in two months. Taking the surprise out of the equation helps immensely! You're also not subject to the whims of traditional publishing on a number of levels.

Those are three practices that have helped me manage a career as a full-time writing with essentially no other income. The other, quite obvious step, would be to make buckets of money and never have to think about budgeting again. 

Maybe someday!

Budgeting Self-Pub Production Costs

On the self-pub side of the publishing equation, you carry your production costs upfront. That's editing, cover art, formatting, ISBNs, copyright and in some cases, printing/distribution. Add audio production (charged per finished hour) if that's a format you offer. None of it is cheap. Yes, big backlists are critical to achieving a profit in this industry, but that's balanced by the upfront costs of production. Emotional costs are a different topic for a different post. Opportunity costs vary by individual but absolutely must be considered. If you're a speedy writer capable of producing 4+ books/year, the cost of production might be what limits how many books you publish in a year. Expect to lose money during your first few years while you build your backlist and your audience.

For my Urban Fantasy series, my cover art is my highest production cost because I didn't want to use stock photo models. I went all-in for the custom photoshoot. Yes, I could cut my art costs significantly by using premade covers or stock photo models. For me, ensuring my model didn't show up on sixteen other books that weren't mine was important enough to allocate a large portion of my budget for cover art.

I chose my cover artist because he's good, he's timely, and he also offers book production services. My "cover art" costs include images and lettering, plus banner/social media images, formatting for ebook and print, and covers for both formats. Essentially, I send my cover artist my completed manuscript and a summary description for what I want the cover to look like and, after a bit of back and forth, he (and his team) send me finished book files that are ready for uploading to distributors. For me, the savings in opportunity costs offset a significant portion of the cash cost. YMMV.

For my High Fantasy series, editing costs me more than art because the books are twice as long as the UF books, and I opted for an illustrator instead of a photographer for the art. Now, let me disabuse you of any notion that illustrators are by default cheaper than photographers. That's not remotely a true or fixed thing. Art is art, thus subject to a very wide price range. There are artists you may love but can't afford (or your schedules may never align). That's a reality that comes with the business. While it's important to have a book with a good looking cover--yes, people absolutely judge your book by its cover, hence the saying--don't blow your budget on art alone. You can always recover your books if/when your budget allows.

If you're writing a series, the production costs are a fairly fixed per-book charge, which makes them easy to budget. Ideally with a series, if you know how long that series is going to be, you can negotiate bundled pricing with your artist and/or book production team. Some will, some won't, some you'll discover you don't want to work with for the whole series (thus, ensure there's an "out" clause in any contract).

Recurring costs like website (hosting, design/build, custom email, SSL, etc.), newsletters, ads-creative, ads-runs, promotions, promotions art/copy, and subscriptions to design/creative creation sites, stock photo sites, cloud storage, distribution sites, and post boxes can be broken into annual charges, monthly, and per-use. These charges may spike when you drop a new release, but they're charges you incur even if you don't publish a new book. They're charges of running the business.

The hardest recurring cost to budget is advertising using CPC, because sometimes the company will use all your daily maximum allotment and sometimes they use a fraction of it. For the purposes of budgeting, assume they'll max you out every day. You don't want to end up in debt due to the whims of algorithms. How much of your total budget should you allocate to advertising? It varies. Less when you're starting off, more at midlist, less once you have a large and dedicated fan base. Not a particularly helpful answer, I know. The most helpful generalization I can offer is that don't spend too much when you don't have a backlist. You need inventory (aka multiple books) for ads to turn a profit because your ROI (return on investment) comes from subsequent full-price sales of your other (non-advertised) books. There are many online classes in advertising. Look for the ones that deal specifically with books and fiction in particular. Book advertising is a different beast from other products. Non-fic relies heavily on author platforms/reputations, which doesn't commonly apply to fiction (you don't need to be an Influencer to write a killer thriller). The book community is hypersensitive to social-space spamming and unsolicited inbox invasions that many product-sales classes encourage, so don't waste your money on broad-topic sessions.

Now, I could go on and on, but this rough overview probably has caused your eyes to glaze over, so I'll stop. The most important thing about writerly finances whether you're trad-pubbed, hybrid, or self-pubbed is that you have a budget and stick to it. Like any creative industry, feast and famine are real. Don't blow your money during seasons of feast; you're going to need it during seasons of famine.

Real Information on Author Finances

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is again eerily timely. We're talking writer finances. How do you budget for uneven income? What’s your biggest expense?

With so many people struggling financially due to the #COVID19 shutdowns, managing money is heavy on many people's minds. It's odd to find myself well-equipped to deal with this because - as a full-time writer with no other income and with a non-salaried spouse who does not provide me with health insurance - I am always juggling the financial balls.

Though many people regard writers as wealthy, most are not. There's a huge spectrum of author incomes, from approaching zero to multi-millions. Various groups use surveys and data-mining to estimate median author incomes - eliciting huge arguments, too - but the short answer is that how much an author makes varies. And it doesn't just vary from author to author, but it varies over an author's career. There are good years and bad, feast and famine, upward trends and downward ones. Even within the course of a year, that income varies.

The bottom line is, if you're relying on writing income to pay the bills, then budgeting is a major challenge. There is no salary, so the standard method of budgeting - knowing your monthly income and keeping expenses below that number - doesn't work. So, what does work?

The simplest and lowest-risk method: many authors who write full time have a stable source of income that does not come from writing - a retirement annuity or a spouse's salary. In this scenario, budgeting can be done according to the reliable income, with income from writing counting as "gravy." Now, the reliable income budget can be pretty bare bones, meaning the gravy is pretty important, but this also allows for a percentage of writing income to go back into the business.

I'd love to be doing it this way! However, I'm not. My husband retired early from his state job, so while he does have a monthly stipend, there's not much left after his health insurance premium. (I self-insure through the ACA.) He's also non-salaried, so his income fluctuates wildly.

So, how do I handle budgeting when in some months I receive 15% of my annual income and in others 2%? (Those are my 2019 numbers.)

Very carefully?

What I'd love to be able to do is budget annually. I'd love to set aside a year's worth of fixed expenses - mortgage, utilities, groceries, etc. (which are, by the way, my biggest expenses) - and pay those ahead or out of an account set aside for that purpose. I've come pretty close to being able to do that, but not as consistently as I'd like. If I ever received good-sized advance - like more than $100K - I'd set it aside for that.

What I usually can do is budget quarterly. At any given time, I like to have enough money to cover projected expenses for the ensuing three months. That way, if what we have in hand looks like it'll dip, I have a few months to try to supplement the income.

One thing that helps hugely with stabilizing income is self-publishing. While an author still can't control sales, the retail platforms pay monthly, which really helps to even out the income. Diversifying income streams as much as possible helps, too.

Of course, keeping expenses low is ideal, but that's true of any budget. So is earning a Whole Bunch of Money!

In the meantime, we do our best to make the ever-shifting ends meet.

Why Being an Author Is the Best Job I've Ever Had

This little cactus is growing - and blooming away! - beneath the shelter of this much larger paddle cactus. I think of this, not as hiding its light under a bushel, but welcoming the sheltering strength of a friend. Go, little cactus, go!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is our favorite part and least favorite part of being an author.

I'm having a hard time picking my favorite part. Really, being an author is an amazing job. Easily the most fun, most rewarding job I've ever had. (And I've had a few, including two previous substantial career paths.) How do I love it? Let me count the ways!

1. I get to create for a living. Spending my days weaving stories the way I want them to be is unlike anything else. The only conference calls I have are with people talking about my favorite subject: me and my work. I don't have to attend meetings or work with other people unless I choose to.  
2. I am a source that creates money for other people. By writing my books and stories, I generate income that then generates money for others. From my assistant, to editors, to cover designers, to my website designer, even to retailers like Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo - they all have income because of what I create. That's powerful stuff.
3. I get to make my favorite authors be my friends. This is really the best perk, that I can stalk reach out to people who write books I love and they become my friends. My twelve-year-old self still has little fan girl meltdowns over it.
4. I'm creating a source of long term income. The super cool thing about writing books is the money they generate continues to come in, for the most part quite regularly, forever. Especially now that "out of print" is no longer an issue. My books will continue to generate income for my heirs. My first published novella, which has been out for over ten years, still bring in about $100/month. Not a fortune, sure, but it all adds up.
5. I'm creating something that will outlive me. Long after I'm gone, my books will still exist. Will I care? Well, no, but while I live I feel good about giving something lasting to the world.

What is my least favorite part then? An easy answer there: the fluctuating income. I self-insure, have no employer-bestowed benefits, no guaranteed check every month. It makes budgeting impossible, not knowing how much money will come in at any given time. Ideally, I'd make enough - hit the literary jackpot as some do - and have a big financial cushion. If I could budget a year in advance, that would be amazing. Otherwise I'm at the mercy of a fluctuating marketplace. 

Small price to pay, however, for the awesomeness of the job!