{"id":960,"date":"2009-07-08T21:49:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-09T04:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/07\/08\/pay-the-writer\/"},"modified":"2009-07-08T21:49:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-09T04:49:00","slug":"pay-the-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/07\/08\/pay-the-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Pay the Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reading Monday’s blog post<\/a>, my friend Loren<\/a> emailed me to ask: “How soon do you realistically think it will be before you make money from writing?”<\/p>\n

I wrote up this response:<\/p>\n

I’ve been submitting short stories to magazines; if and when one of those sells, I might get a couple of hundred dollars (depending on the publication). The short fiction is mostly for practice, and to accumulate professional credits.<\/p>\n

After I finish this month’s rewrites\/additions to the novel, I’ll start querying it; if it sells, a typical first-novel advance is about $5,000. (Last year at VP<\/a>, I talked to one of the staff who had signed a 3-book deal for a total advance of $60,000. That’s insanely great for a new novelist. Her agent had managed to get two publishers into a bidding war.)<\/p>\n

More on first novel advances:
http:\/\/www.tobiasbuckell.com\/2005\/10\/05\/author-advance-survey-version-20\/<\/a><\/p>\n

I also have a couple of screenplays in the trunk. I have no idea what the going rate for those is, but my impression is it’s highly variable depending on a variety of factors (no pun intended). I’d have to do quite a bit of work to get either of them into fighting shape.<\/p>\n

Realistically, I probably won’t ever make a living from writing alone; most fiction writers don’t. I expect to get back into web consulting in a few years–I’ve already started attending the various open-source events here in Portland–or doing other types of freelance work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those are the facts. I’m luckier than most to be able to take a few years off to chase this dream–I’ve already won the lottery once, figuratively speaking. I have no illusions about my chances of becoming a bestselling millionaire novelist<\/a> (to wit: vanishingly slim), but I believe I have a good chance at getting published, sooner or later. I’m working on the “sooner” part.<\/p>\n

~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading Monday’s blog post, my friend Loren emailed me to ask: “How soon do you realistically think it will be before you make money from writing?” I wrote up this response: I’ve been submitting short stories to magazines; if…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[11,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing","category-writing"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}