How To Make A Living As A Novelist

You lot Can Earn a Total-Time Living Writing Fiction

I earn more writing novels than brusk stories — and you probably will as well

Photograph past Nick Fewings on Unsplash

For several years now, I've been earning the bulk of my income by writing fiction under a diversity of pen names y'all've never heard of. And information technology isn't anything special about me. Thousands of authors you lot've never heard of are quietly making a full-time living creating fiction.

Truthful, thousands of others fail. Probably hundreds of thousands. Simply they don't fail for thousands of unique reasons. They mostly fail for the same reason people neglect in whatever business — they effort to shortcut their mode to the money.

I don't want to call anybody out, then I'll paraphrase the single nearly damaging piece of communication I hear repeated to new authors: "The American attention span is dropping. Even a beginner tin can make a good living by starting with novellas or even short stories. People are looking for shorter reads. You can write your first volume in a weekend."

If y'all've researched self-publishing for a minute, yous've heard some version of this advice… oh… approximately a zillion times. Fortunately, when I got started dorsum in the wild and woolly days of 2015, I did no research and took no communication. I just plunged in and wrote a 150,000-discussion novel. Result: I've been full-fourth dimension as an author/self-publisher since I hit publish in 2016.

Let'due south hear it from the Chiliad Master

Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Cake has been offering this advice for many years:

"[T]he short story is infinitely more than difficult to sell than the novel. The market for short fiction was minuscule when I was starting out 20 years ago. Since so information technology has consistently shrunk…the novel is a much meliorate identify for the beginner to get started…"

I'm quoting these words from the 1994 edition of Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers. The copyright is 1981. That's fairly old advice, you may mumble. Maybe and then, but you lot know what advice is even older, and people still keep quoting it? This chestnut from Ray Bradbury:

"Write a brusque story every week. It's non possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row."

With all due respect, Mr. Bradbury published his first brusque story in 1938. There were dozens of paying markets for science fiction short stories in those days. Near were already gone by 1981. And the money for brusque stories hasn't flowed whatsoever more freely in the decades since. Information technology may be impossible to write 52 bad stories in a row. Merely it's a breeze to write 52 stories in a row that don't sell for beans.

Ask me how I know

You may wonder why I tin feel so confident advising people to start out writing novels. What would have happened if I started out by writing thirty five,000-word short stories? That's 150,000 words — same as my novel. How do I know the stories wouldn't have fabricated more money?

In 2018, curiosity got the meliorate of me, and I decided to exercise the test. After all, xxx curt stories are a lot easier to write. You don't have to develop even one complex plot. You don't have to be concerned with continuity over hundreds of pages.

I knew from freelance work I'd done for others that I could easily toss out a finished five,000-word story every single solar day. But it was beyond me to produce v,000 words a mean solar day of high-quality, ready-to-publish pages for a novel. I'm closer to ii,000 words a twenty-four hours when it comes to that.

So, thinking life would exist easier, I started a pen name that would begin with thirty brusk stories. I whipped up a agglomeration of covers. Dropped the stories boom, boom, smash one time a 24-hour interval for a month. To brand the test fair — well, actually, to make information technology easier to cross-promote to my existing mailing list — I wrote in the same genre equally my debut novel name.

The tale of the tape comes when I pull out the onetime data for each pen proper noun'due south start twelve months of Amazon income. In its kickoff year, the brusque story pen name earned a little less than one-tertiary of what the novel pen name earned in its first year. Looked at from the other management, the novel name earned triple what the brusk story name earned. Non all 150,000 words are created equal. Writing thirty short stories was nowhere near equally valuable to me as writing one novel.

You're going to observe a lot of authors, both cocky and trad-published, who will tell y'all the same thing. You probably can't afford to start out with short fiction. Especially if the lack of sales breaks your center and spurs you to quit writing altogether.

Attention span studies aren't near us

A few weeks ago, a baby writer posted in a Facebook group something to the effect of, "Since the American attending bridge is now eight seconds, don't yous agree we should all be writing novellas?"

No, I don't concur. I very much don't concord. Planning a fiction career based on how fast people bounce out of online nonfiction blogs and news articles is completely idiotic. I lost the link to my response, simply the rant went something like this: "The attention span of American readers isn't eight seconds. Effort 8 seasons. In 1920, you could make a living writing brusk stories. The world has moved on. Television series accept taught Americans to dig into complicated plots with enough of arcs. People desire a binge, not a bite."

Of course, you probably don't care what I call up. What matters to you lot is what the big names remember. Is absolutely massive indie all-time-seller Amanda Yard. Lee big enough for you? Some time back, she posted this comment in a public writer'south forum:

"I had been doing five 30K shorts a yr as extra titles but they're being replaced with 2 95K books in a new serial instead. Why? Considering I bet I brand an additional 75K-100K for the twelvemonth… In my genres, the readers want longer books. That's what I'grand giving to them.

Holy flying bottle rockets, Batman. If my novellas were costing me an estimated 75-100K a year in opportunity costs, I'd quit writing them too. Self-publishing commentator David Gaughran pulls no punches in his online blog to writing curt stories:

"If you are focused more on making a living as a author, in that location is one inescapable fact: in virtually every genre, it'southward much easier to sell full-length books, and far easier again if those books happen to exist part of a series. "

The best prove is to go to Amazon and do a search for the top 50 best sellers in Kindle books. The list changes hourly, but when I did information technology just at present, there wasn't a single brusque story on the listing. A little chip ago, there were six of them. They were all written by Dean Koontz under contract to Amazon. Y'all're not him, and neither am I.

A key reason readers prefer longer books and series

If you only read trad books, yous may not realize how much piece of work readers go though to find a good indie writer. Almost anybody tin can upload well-nigh anything to Amazon KDP and many other cocky-publishing platforms — and they usually do. Equally a reader, every fourth dimension I look for a new indie author on Amazon, I'g wading through the slush pile. When I practise find a keeper, I want to read as much of what they've got before I have to hit the bricks in search of somebody else expert.

Certain, I read those half dozen Dean Koontz stories. But if I saw six vigilante short stories from an unknown name? Nah. Probably not.

Why author/publishers adopt longer books or series

You've got to promote your books, or nobody will e'er observe them among the millions of others floating around the ebook sales space. That ways you'll need to buy ads. For many of those ads, you'll pay a cost per click. Thirty-five cents is a bid that will usually get your ad put in forepart of a decent number of potential buyers.

The problem is, the royalty on a 99 cent brusk story on Amazon runs around 33 cents. Fifty-fifty if every single person who clicks goes on to buy, y'all're losing coin on every auction. Eek.

But what if the book is role of a series? Let's say y'all're advertizing a full-length novel in a gripping series with 5 other books already published and set up to buy. If you've priced book i as a loss leader at 99 cents, you're yet losing a couple pennies every time you sell it. But you don't care, because the other novels are $four.99.

The royalty on a $four.99 Amazon ebook sold in the US marketplace to a U.s.a. reader runs around $3.45. In other words, your 35 cent click will often fetch you (0.33x1) + (three.45x5)= $17.58 in royalties.

Aye, I've greatly simplified the math. Amazon charges publishers a delivery fee. There are also pocket-size costs to producing your book like ownership cover art and editing services. Moreover, the royalties are unlike and sometimes lower depending on where the reader is and what market they buy in. But you go the idea. There's a way to make money in this business. Pretty good coin, sometimes.

The bottom line

Writing short stories is a side hustle. Information technology's fun, and I write curt stories as well, but it isn't my major source of income. Frequently, I give them away as reader bonuses.

If y'all take away only one thing from this story, take this: Never assume you've failed as a fiction writer just considering you've failed at making much money from your short stories.

Most nobody (except Dean Koontz!) makes adept money from brusk stories. It isn't you. It'south market forces. Write a novel. Improve, write a trilogy. Best, write a serial.

If y'all're just looking for a side hustle from your writing, y'all might similar my case study about a short nonfiction book I'm selling on Amazon.