Becoming a Novelist., is it even a worthwhile aspiration?

[SophiaGrace]

I'm starting to come up with stories, fiction stories, but I feel as though my aspirations might not be worth it because fiction writers get paid on commission. Kinda like how a fine art artist is paid.

Which probably means living in poverty.

-_- my dreams seem dashed. It seems as though I'd need to practice writing fiction every day to be any good and that's still no guarantee??

 

[IgnoredOne]

Its a reasonable supplement to income. I've been writing since I was 14 and was published several times, and am in a fairly famous writing guild. That said, I know of no one in my circle who earns his income solely on writing. It is theoretically possible, however. The market for books seems to be decreasing, sadly; while it still is significant, as a form of entertainment, its not nearly as popular as video games, etc.

Don't limit yourself to fiction; write everything and anything. It will all prove useful to your development.

 

[SophiaGrace]

Do you think it might become more popular because its going into electronic format?

 

[WishingWell]

I don't know about the income factor, but if you have the inspiration to write, DO IT! Usually, people that have the inspiration have the talent, and it certainly can't hurt to try to make a living out of it!

And one serious quote that I heard in the movie "Throw Mama From the Train" is, "A WRITER WRITES--ALWAYS!"

The best of luck to you!

 

[IgnoredOne]

Do you think it might become more popular because its going into electronic format?

Its a fair argument but I haven't seen a ton of evidence for it. Ebooks are a big market, but would the people who drop a few dollars for an ebook also have dropped ten dollars for a paper book as well? Ebooks do vastly lower the cost of production, however.

In my experience so far, the only books that are exclusively ebooks tend to be pretty bad. I can imagine that ebooks could become a lot more promising if its linked to a marketing campaign of some sort.

But then again, pdfs are easily pirated. So that, again, could defeat it as a vehicle of profit.

 

[oopsiedoop]

The truth about art is that the probability is that you will not make money at it, and yet it's still the most important thing you can do for yourself. You don't make money at a relationship either, most of the time, and yet we all here crave those, right? It's like that. You have to do it, you have to keep trying forever, it's just a necessity. Trust me on this. No "have tos" ever fill the space occupied by your "want tos", whatever those may be.

 

[IgnoredOne]

Well, if you want to make a living off writing, your best option is to begin to blog. A popular blog or webcomic can definitely turn a profit, and if you're very lucky, even allow you to make a living off it. If you're Penny Arcade, you can even make a fortune off it.

You have to be crazy and have an evil roommate called Gabe to pull that one off, though.

There are other ways too, just takes some creativity. In the end, though, its usually supplementary rather than primary income.

 

[SophiaGrace]

I have to admit I still feel kinda depressed to realize this, since I have been "training" for years by reading lots and lots of books and trying to increase my vocabularly every time I read.

Sorry to be a downer guys.

 

[IgnoredOne]

Get an evil roommate called Gabe

Seriously, though, if you think you can be a writer, just do it. Don't expect to necessarily make a living from it, but don't let that stop you. Who knows, you might actually have the right combination of talent, devotion and luck to make your mark. And no matter what, it'll benefit you to be able to communicate between with the written form.

 

[paulo]

would be nice to make a living with any kind of artform your into.
but that isnt the main reason why you do it is it.
the best stuff comes from doing what you love to do, not trying to make something that sells.
for me anyway.

 

[kamya]

Dood. Write a decent trilogy type, or collection of stories, and self publish on kindle for 1$-2$ for each book. There are writers doing that and people will buy from them because they are cheap books that they can try out on their kindle. I got one series that was complete crap. There was no editing and typos everywhere. That book had hundreds of good reviews though. I think if you kept writing those and selling cheap then it would make at least a decent amount of money and give you experience/ credit as an author to be given a chance by bigger publishers.

The specific author I bought from had a whole new trilogy out a few months later. And she was eventually able to get published and has paperback versions out now too I think. Ugh she even raised the price on them after they started getting popular =P Here is a link to her stuff. http://www.amazon.com/Amanda-Hocking/e/B003H4L762/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1320691936&sr=8-1 I read her trylle trilogy...the one that was not very good. It says on her wikipedia that it became a USA best selling series and is opted for a film. It was $1.99 per book when I downloaded them and now it is $8.99. And the series was pretty bad. Not really bad I guess, just amateur. But that's enough when you are writing fiction and selling for $2 a download.

 

[SophiaGrace]

Huh, that's actually a good idea!

 

[Thrasymachus]

Writing is not likely to make you any type of decent income, especially nowadays. In the 19th Century and even early 20th, writers used to be like rockstars are today, because so many people read recreationally. Now so few read and there is much less money in writing except for a small minority. However, maybe you can find one of the type of jobs where you can steal labor time from your employer to write on the side. Or you can just do it as a means to express yourself without any monetary expectation.

I have thought of writing myself as a means to express myself and decrease my intellectual isolation, but as in most things in my life, I set it aside with my penchant for procrastination. Bukowski has a great poem on why to write called "so you want to be a writer?", which I cannot link to due to the akismet tyranny.

 

[Sprint]

Keep what will support you financially as your main area of focus with the writing on the side. As IO said, the "supplement".

Maybe someday you could write a book about your life as a psychologist

---

Writing is not likely to make you any type of decent income, especially nowadays. In the 19th Century and even early 20th, writers used to be like rockstars are today, because so many people read recreationally. Now so few read and there is much less money in writing except for a small minority. However, maybe you can find one of the type of jobs where you can steal labor time for your employer to write on the side. Or you can just do it as a means to express yourself without any monetary expectation.

I have thought of writing myself as a means to express myself and decrease my intellectual isolation, but as in most things in my life, I set it aside with my penchant for procrastination. Bukowski has a great poem on why to write called "so you want to be a writer?", which I cannot link to due to the akismet tyranny.

No more links??

 

[IgnoredOne]

Dood. Write a decent trilogy type, or collection of stories, and self publish on kindle for 1$-2$ for each book. There are writers doing that and people will buy from them because they are cheap books that they can try out on their kindle. I got one series that was complete crap. There was no editing and typos everywhere. That book had hundreds of good reviews though. I think if you kept writing those and selling cheap then it would make at least a decent amount of money and give you experience/ credit as an author to be given a chance by bigger publishers.

Unfortunately, the good reviews come from people like myself, who get paid by a third party to write the good reviews - its not something I'm proud of doing, but its nice to have some random money every month. Do you wonder where the third party gets the money to pay us?

From the author, who pays good money to potentially get that 'cred', but its a shell game because the publishing houses are well aware of this game.

So once again, the writer gets ultimately screwed and the broker(in this case of good reviews) gets the largest profit.

 

[kamya]

Authors will buy tons of copies of their own books just to hit best sellers charts. Which sucks. I was just saying that this particular author is not even that good. She is able to make a living doing it though. I also don't think this author payed for reviews. Her books came out around Christmas time last year which is when tons of new kindles were being bought/gifted. Since her books were the cheapest at the time, people were just buying them to test out their new kindle.

There's even more ways for authors to make money off of amazon/kindle now because of their new short story/article format(I forget what it's called.). Those downloads are usually under a dollar and are interesting to read.

 

[Bread]

Sad reality of life seems to be that you can't really live on your art, you gotta supplement your muse with a day job. Me, I was very much into writing and whatnot when I was younger. Spark just died, somehow. Do make comics nowadays, but it's mostly as an exhaust for all that creativity and urge to draw that I don't get to implement in my daily work at EvilCo. Hell, it's one of the things keeping me sane...ish, anyway.

Still, hope you'll find a way to at least be creative and express yourself, even if it doesn't put food on the table.

 

[SophiaGrace]

I don't know why all this attention is given to arts and crafts when you are a child, and then you have to grow up and realize you can't do what you love.

:/

 

[Badjedidude]

Here's the sad truth of being a writer for a living:

YOU WILL NOT LIVE ON THE PROFITS FROM YOUR BOOK(s). THIS ONLY RARELY HAPPENS, AND IT ONLY HAPPENS TO HUGE, WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS WITH A HUMONGOUS FAN-BASE.

It's very difficult to become a published author OF ANY LITERARY WORK. And the sad thing is that even once you finish your novel, it will be changed and written-over by editors who attempt to make it more marketable for a wider audience.

YOU WILL PROBABLY NEVER BE ABLE TO PUBLISH YOUR MANUSCRIPT EXACTLY THE WAY YOU WANT IT TO BE.

Once you start thinking of the writing/publishing industry in terms of Hollywood, then you'll get the picture. Writers have very little control over their own work, and it's EXTREMELY difficult to get into the field.

However... if you feel this is something that you want to try to accomplish, then by all means... GO FOR IT!!

 

[IgnoredOne]

6000 word limit ;.;

I do think that my best published story got truncated of one of its essential sections. I'm still bitter about it, although I wasn't quite as smacked with the editorializing as some are. And it is pretty difficult, though hardly impossible - remember though that people like me started at 14, within the context of a writing guild, with constant practice and competition on top of winning writing accolades/contests from near the start of our attempt, wrote our first 1k pages, burnt out first 1k pages for being crap, and finally got published after a few years of submitting manuscripts(often w/ connections, in our case).

Its possible, but definitely difficult. A newbie submitting unsolicited manuscripts has an extremely tough chance.

On the other hand, there are ways of doing what you love and being wildly successful with it. You need to find an angle that most people cannot do; something almost absurdly simple is to team up with an artist(hopefully, a close friend) and work on a comic. The social aspects of this are difficult, but Dark Horse and a lot of comic book publishers love this, as it saves them a ton of effort in trying to pair this up. Flash and video games are also excellent examples.