How Much money can I make writing a book?
April 5th, 2009
I am currently writing a book and will soon try to publish. This will be my first and I was wondering how much money I will or could make from it.
A $$$ number would be nice
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There's no way to estimate that, sorry.
There are people who write one book in their entire lifetime and can live off that well and happily for the rest of their lives.
There are also writers who continuously produce good stuff but will always struggle to make ends meet at the end of the month.
I'd like to be able to say that it all depends on how good a writer you are, but that's just not true. I've seen crud published and people get huge recognition for it, and really great authors fall by the wayside. In the end, it's a combination of talent, skill, timing, luck, the cultural mood, luck, the mood of critics and reviewers as they read your stuff, promotion, luck, good editing, luck, oh, and did I mention luck? That's just the way it goes.
If you can secure a publisher for your book, you can work out the royalty, payments, and all that with them. Ask around.
Good luck, and I hope to see you on the shelves!
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a lot of money if its a best seller.
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What's this money you speak of? Money should flow TO the author, not away from them. There are many, many factors involved for an author to make money on a book they've written. The easy part is actually writing the book, then comes the work. You could get your book accepted by a major house really quickly or in reality it could and probably will take years to find a home for your work. Even then, just because you get one book published, it doesn't mean your second book has a home. It really depends on how well your first book sells, if it doesn't then why publish a second. It comes down to dollars and cents, publishing after all IS a business. It takes alot of money to get a book noticed and even then, if the book isn't good, it won't sell, simple as that.
Thomas
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Not much really, until you become famous. The real money comes from later books and speaking tours.
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It all depends upon how well your book sells. Depending upon your contract, you can get up to $5 per copy sold, but most get less than that.
I once had a writing teacher who told us that writers make, on average, about $12,000 per year, with the exception of the Stephen Kings and J.K.Rowlings of the world. And that's with cranking out 2-4 books per year.
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It actually depends on how many people buy your book, or you could call that how many of your books were sold. If you are famous and people like you you will received more. So it depends on the situation.
If your book is the best seller, than you will received more. An author receive his payment based on how many of his book were sold.
But first of all not all publisher would take the risk of publishing books that are boring and not interesting. So therefore there is a check before every book is publish.
Writing an article in a newspaper could earn about 50 dollars per article. It doesn't have to be long. Just about 900 words. But there's an editor that usually rejects.
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