
How to Be a Professional Author and Not Die Screaming and Starving - danso
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2019/09/17/how-to-be-a-professional-author-and-not-die-screaming-and-starving-in-a-lightless-abyss/
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jonathanstrange
Glad to hear that there are some authors who can make a living of their
writing. Unfortunately, this mostly only applies to the English book market.
I'm writing in German, where it is estimated that only a couple of hundred
authors can make a living from writing novels. Moreover, science fiction is
pretty much dead in Germany. People are reading English novels or translations
thereof, which means less risk for the publishers and access to many great and
professional authors.

~~~
fastball
So write books in English?

What about German makes you want to write novels in German specifically?

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jonathanstrange
I believe that for most people it is not possible to write good novels in a
language in which you're not a native speaker. I wouldn't even dare to try,
although my work language is English and all of my scientific publications are
in English. Notice that literary translation is also usually from the foreign
language into the mother tongue and almost never the other way around.

Yes, there are notable exceptions like Vladimir Nabokov, but these are
extremely rare and definitely not the rule.

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keiferski
Joseph Conrad would be the exemplar of this category, I think. English was his
third language and he wasn't fluent in it until his twenties.

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cafard
Andrei Makhine and Milan Kundera write in French, no?

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keiferski
Yes, but personally I consider Conrad a better writer than both of them.
Kundera also wrote most of his well-known books in Czech.

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Merrill
>"Have plans on top of plans. What if your genre collapses? What if your agent
quits? What if your next advance is way too low to survive upon? What if the
economy shits the bed? Have a plan for next year, for five years, for ten.
Envision how you remain in this game. A writing career is, as I’ve noted
before, a CLIFF MITIGATION EXERCISE. You are eternally speeding toward the
cliff’s edge."

That seems like good advice for any career - even if you are comfortably
cocooned in an uber-successful corporation. Things change! Your career could
be collateral damage from and anti-trust proceeding.

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finestkludge
One thing that always annoys me about these sorts of posts is how much they
oversell the competence of publishers.

I've worked in book publishing most of my career, both with publishers and
with independent authors. Trust me, the publisher's marketing strategy is
nothing special.

The difference between a successful book and a middling book, barring the
impossibly rare "so good it organically becomes a world beater," is the size
of the author's platform. Publishers have a rigid PR/marketing process they
run for every book, involving sending galleys (press copies) to the same press
contacts, and sometimes those efforts net press coverage, and sometimes that
coverage will result in some sales. If a press is very forward-thinking, by
industry standards, they may invest in building the author a website or
helping manage social.

However, books that hit bestseller lists are typically written by authors who
have a large, engaged audience they've built on their own. The impact of a
publisher's marketing budget is typically small, and definitely not worth
giving up 80%-plus of your sales due to royalties.

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ivan_ah
> [...] the publisher's marketing strategy is nothing special.

So true! I'm self publishing for this reason—the 10% of profits as royalty
just doesn't make sense... I mean I get it that developmental editing, copy
editing, cover design, typesetting and other pre-publication services are
useful add ons, but still not worth the publisher's 80% cut.

In one thing mainstream publisher have going for them is the reputation,
especially in the academic space (textbooks). Seeing that a book was "vetted"
by a serious publisher gets you some immediate respect from the
reader—something self-published authors have to earn on their own.

Like you say though, the author's "platform" is the key thing, and who better
than the author themselves to build that?

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flywithdolp
I think that nowadays authors have many more ways for revenue streams than
before

Doing some ghost writing, being contributors in large publications and selling
backlinks (doggy I know) and more stuff writers can do beside their being full
time Author

The money they can make from those small jobs can help them to have some more
freedom to continue their profession as Authors

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baud147258
How do authors find ghost writing work? They advertise it on their site?

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agota
ProBlogger jobs board is the best place for that in my opinion.

There's also UpWork, but I'd avoid that, because it's a race to the bottom.

You could also try applying to marketing agencies directly.

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cafard
Somebody, probably Trollope (employed by the Royal Mail during most of his
writing career) quoted Sir Walter Scott as saying that literature is a good
staff but a bad crutch.

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rm445
I feel like 90% of this advice to authors comes down to: your advance is just
that, an advance on sales royalties. Non-recoupable, but if you're 'lucky'
enough to win a bigger advance than your eventual sales, it's not a great sign
for your career anyway.

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quantumhobbit
I absolutely have to plug the author’s latest book, Wanderers. It was pretty
amazing.

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Matticus_Rex
I've only heard really good reviews, which doesn't happen that often with long
books. Definitely planning to read it!

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viach
This is the first time ever I see an author is mentioning his book without a
link to Amazon. Impressive and refreshing.

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cryptozeus
Nothing wrong with pointing to your work. Would you say the same if developer
writes a blog about his work without pointing to his github account?

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agota
This sentiment that there's something wrong with promoting one's work is just
bizarre.

It's even more bizarre in the context of an article that discusses how to make
a living as an author.

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criddell
> Let’s say 10% per hardcover sale, or 25% of an e-book.

Are those percentages of the MSRP or of the actual sale price?

I use a price tracker for ebooks where I add every book I want and set an
alert for $5. When it hits that price, I buy it. If I do that for Wanderers,
will the author get 25% of the $13.99 list price or of the $5 sale price?

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faet
Generally, MSRP. It depends on the bookstore's agreement with the publisher.
But, most are based on cover price.

So, if a store sells the book for $5. The author still gets $3.50

This generally doesn't apply if the publisher reduces the price for a 'sale
period' though.

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dr_dshiv
What a fantastic article. Only cringed at the humour once. Good takeaways.

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einr
Wow, this is just far beyond terrible web design. On a 1920x1080 monitor I
have to scroll down _four and a half entire screen heights_ before I get to
the text of the article. The headline alone takes up about half the screen...

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Santosh83
On a 1366x768 laptop it is three screen lengths for me. But this seems to be
the common format for news/blog articles these days, there is nothing
particularly egregious about this site...

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reallydontask
> But this seems to be the common format for news/blog articles these days,
> there is nothing particularly egregious about this site...

normalization of deviance, i'd guess

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SolaceQuantum
At first I thought this was on becoming a professional author, now after I
read it I understand this is on how to maintain professional author as a
career. One thing I'm curious about though- the author in question never
brings up cover designers or editors, but does advise to listen to the agent
and ask a lot of questions.

I do know that cover design can be controversial and that editors can often
encourage changes that make the author feel like garbage (eg. 'change the
entire tense of the novel' or 'kill this beautifully written scene'). What is
the advisement for that?

