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My experience writing and selling a short story (superamit.substack.com)
266 points by superamit on July 12, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 156 comments



My brother writes Sci Fi for a living. He's self taught and self published. He does well, he's sold over a million books. What many people don't know is he suffered from severe tendonitis that really narrowed his career options. He started writing because he could write using voice recognition software. Now he writes with a keyboard, as the pain is more manageable. I'm extremely proud of him for how well he's been able to carve out his own path in life, in the developing world, against adversity.

https://www.amazon.com/Jasper-T.-Scott/e/B00B7A2CT4%3Fref=db...


I've been reading Jasper's work for a quite a while, and given your brother's very regular output would never have guessed!

It's hard to even visualise the effort it must have taken to overcome those obstacles to become one of the better self-published sci-fi authors. Respect.


30+ novels! Very impressive.

How long did it take him to get to 1 million copies sold, and was there anything he did along the way that had an outsized impact on his success?


He's been writing for about 12 years, and he crossed the million threshold at least two years ago - so about a decade.

I'm not sure about the answer to the second question, I'll ask him over a beer next time we get together. I would say that an important factor was investing in professional cover art, editing, etc. He also more or less timed the rise of Kindle books, quite by accident, and I think that also helped his career.

But there's no substitute for caring about his work and putting in the time, which he definitely does.


I want to read one of his books. What is your recommendation for a book lover (although a casual sci-fi reader at best)


I just finished Planet B which I quite enjoyed and I think is very approachable for casual Sci Fi readers.


Hey I’m making a product for self publishing. Could I ask your bother a few questions as one of the people who have successfully done it?


Wow, just wow.

And thank you to share your brother's work.

You don't need to say you are proud of your brother, I can see that in your words.


This is an excellent view on how writing speculative fiction actually works. Amit's publication to Tor should be lauded as a serious achievement in his career and not something that an average person could reasonably expect to achieve/plan for. Congratulations to him.

Please consider reading the work itself here: https://www.tor.com/2022/06/01/india-world-amit-gupta/


Agreed, Tor is a very respected publishing house in the sci-fi/fantasy genres.

He’s joining company with works like Enders Game, Wheel of Time, Mistborn, and Stormlight Archive, and a dozen more I’m not able to remember off the top of my head.


For those who haven’t read it, Mistborn is next level. Such a great trilogy.


I’m reading the third book right now and so far the series has been a real struggle to get through. In the first two I found the setting mildly interesting, but mixed with uninteresting characters, dialogue, and plot, with writing that was entirely too verbose and with too many repetitive phrases (like “he raised an eyebrow,“ which happens about once a chapter and sometimes even multiple times per page—see also chuckling, rolling eyes, and snorting, which occur at about the same frequency). Clearly not everybody finds this irritating but I definitely did.

I don’t think I had any problems like that with the writing of other fantasy series like Lord of the Rings and A Game of Thrones. Nor with two other trilogies I read for the first time this year, C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy and The Three‐Body Problem.


I think it’s important to go into it knowing that it’s a piece of YA literature. What I enjoyed were the mechanics and chess game of “burning” magic, as well as characters like Sazed where there is just so much to unpack.

I also think it has a strong portrayal of complex, sustained trauma that is handled very well through the character of Vin. It’s something I think really has a great home in the YA genre while still being a fun page turner/action-y book.

I get what you’re saying, but I also just didn’t go looking for LOTR because I knew that wasn’t what this was. It’s somewhere between a fun summer fantasy series and LOTR. Not as thin as the former, not as rich as the latter. Pretty easy to chew through while also giving you something to savor.


I find the original Mistborn trilogy to be YA-adjacent. You’re never going to get prose like Lord of the Rings out of Sanderson, but if you ever feel like reading more of his work try The Stormlight Archive. It’s his most serious work, for lack of a better word.

Part of the fun is that all of his books interconnect, even though they take place on different worlds with different-but-same magic systems.

If you’re not sure if you want to commit to more, I’d his novella The Emperor’s Soul.


The next time Vin eyes someone or something, my lid will blow. There's a whole lot of fingering going on as well. And on the Shattered Plains, there appears to be a rock formation every other step. I enjoy the books, but not for the prose.


You might like the Machineries of Empire series instead- fascinating world building with serious depth of character and personal stakes. First book is Ninefox Gambit.


It's worth noting that Tor's pay for authors is in the absolute top tier. I've had a short story published in a smaller publication, and they paid me $50 total - $25 for the first six months exclusivity, then $25 again for inclusion in an anthology. That is more typical for a starting out author.

OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!


These figures are interesting for me. One day of contracting dwarfs that.

You'd have to be absolutely passionate and have another income to do this, which is a shame. I think every craft should have its place. Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays.

I hope you get a breakthrough though; because if you keep doing this, you're clearly passionate about your craft!


> Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays.

See also: musicians (recording, less so live performance), DJs, photographers, journalists, documentarians, etc.

Essentially any creative pursuit where:

1) Making it carries high prestige and gratification.

2) The product can be reproduced digitally and appreciated by a large audience.

3) Technology to produce it has become cheaper.

The basic market forces are sucking all the money out of it. I think it's good for a society for skilled creative people to be able to spend most of their time on their art instead of having to do it as a side gig. But we don't seem to have an economic system that currently supports it aside from a small number of lucky winners of the zeitgeist lottery.


Graeber asserts in Bullshit Jobs that when this happens—lots of people wanting these kind of creative high-prestige, high-gratification jobs—the upper echelons of the career tend to be captured by, bluntly, trust fund kids, because they're the only ones for whom a career path that involves potentially years or even decades of barely being paid is viable. Ditto editorships at prestigious publications, non-profit work, all that kind of thing.


Seems like there's certainly a split there. Lots of popular musicians, for instance, from very humble economic backgrounds. Athletes as well - trust fund kids don't seem, as a rule, to be single-mindedly enough focused on sports throughout their entire childhood and adolescence to hit the top tiers.

Maybe the common link between those two, and unlike some other fields, is that the work has to be put in in childhood and adolescense, when "being paid" isn't much of a thing anyway for anyone.


> Lots of popular musicians, for instance, from very humble economic backgrounds.

Lots of musicians from humble backgrounds, but not as many popular ones today as there used to be. A lot of musicians that get big these days often have a narrative around them of coming from limited means (and some actually do) but if you dig, you often find that most had some family connection or something that massively increased the odds of their winning the popularity lottery.

> Athletes as well

Athletes don't quite apply to my model. You might think it's because their primary job is not producing digital media but winning games, but that's not true. Money flows into professional sports in large through people watching games. Sponsorships are very important too, but those trail the athlete's popularity. The athlete is essentially selling some of the popularity they have already garned through media of their games.

I think the main reason there is always a market for young skilled athletes (in sports that are popular to watch) is simply because there is almost no market for watching old games. Unlike novels, music, etc., virtually no one watches older games. So where in other forms of media, you are competing against a constantly growing corpus of existing content, in sports, the content evaporates quite quickly and needs constant refreshing.

(This might suggest that the path to success in other forms of media is by deliberately creating extremely timely content. "Here's a new song about things that happened on July 12, 2022!")


He probably has a point, but Graeber also ends up being pretty full of it in most cases.


Unfortunately, I think this is somewhat unavoidable, there's only so much time people can spend consuming entertainment, and so the market for it is somewhat fixed. Meanwhile, there are many people willing to produce it.

I don't know if it's possible for writing/entertainment/etc., to be sustainable for a large portion of the population without major economic reform.


> there's only so much time people can spend consuming entertainment, and so the market for it is somewhat fixed.

It's even worse than that, actually. Because existing entertainment can still be consumed long after its produced, and even consumed more than once by the same person. When you write a book today, you aren't just competing with other new novels, you're competing with every novel written all the way back to Robinson Crusoe.


True, but there's sufficient distinction between contemporary and classical works that I think the effect may be limited.


On the other hand, Spotify’s most streamed song has been Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of you” since October 2017.


I grew up with this assertion. But right now through my spouse and a lot of friends, I see, that you can earn good money by specializing in a not that popular instrument, e.g. piano (!). And then be just advanced+reliable+do the effort of networking. The money is comparable to a software job.


As an outsider, these seem like terrible compensation for time esp given the talent it seems necessary to publish here.


That's nothing, I write for academia, and pay for getting published.


This comment confuses me. Are you saying that their pay is good for established authors, but they pay only a token amount for authors that they classify as “starting out”? Because the rates you quote are abusive. People who accept token payments for work, out of vanity or a false concept of “exposure”, damage the market for those of us who actually need to get paid for our writing. Such people are the pariahs of the freelance world.


> People who accept token payments for work, out of vanity or a false concept of “exposure”, damage the market for those of us who actually need to get paid for our writing. Such people are the pariahs of the freelance world.

If you want to work in an arena where people are happy to do so for free you need to either get used to it or find a way to make competition illegal or very difficult. That way you can make things better for yourself at the expense of the consumer and people wanting to break in who aren’t related to anyone who matters. For an example see the Screen Actors’ Guild or the American Federation of Musicians.


People have many different reasons for writing. I've actually had this discussion with authors and you seem to be suggesting that people shouldn't be allowed to accept token payments for work if they aren't dependent on it directly as a full-time occupation. Are you going to ban bloggers etc. in general because they dilute the market for writing at sustainable professional rates?

Amateurs (or pros using an activity like writing in support of some other professional activity) make it more difficult for would-be pros--see also photography, people who do open source development on their own time, etc. Too bad.


There is no suggestion of compulsion in my comment. I’m asking that people stop hurting their fellow authors by participating in a race to the bottom, simply because they’re flattered that a for-profit corporation is willing to take their product for essentially no compensation. This has nothing to do with contributing to open-source software, working for nonprofits for a social good, etc. I do all those things. But if a business or a startup with dollar signs in their eyes wants to consult with me, or publish my work, they’re going to pay. And it’s unethical to give away your work under these circumstances.

Although I have sympathy for libertarian points of view, I think that minimum wage laws are important. Without them, you have a race to the bottom for wages for unskilled labor, resulting in widespread suffering. We don’t have minimum wage laws for writers or freelance programmers, so we have to depend on our personal ethics. Please stop giving away your product.


I think you’ve got this a bit twisted, particularly with the notion of for-profit organizations taking with no compensation. Speaking strictly in short fiction, frankly, the vast majority of magazines lose money. Of the magazines that don’t lose money, the vast majority of those don’t make enough to earn the producer/editor(s)/first readers/etc. anything resembling minimum wage. The exceptions are a mere handful: the big 3, Tor, Uncanny Magazine, Clarkesworld, maybe Nature’s Futures section.


Uhh, this thread started with somebody giving their work away to Tor.


No, the article in question is about a person who was paid over a thousand dollars for their work to be purchased by Tor.


I’m not talking about the article. Look at the comment that I originally replied to.


That person was about someone who got paid 50$ at a completely different place?? Am I missing something?


No, my mistake.


My career has benefitted in many ways from writing even if not directly in terms if money. It’s not really my issue that I’m competing with others who want to directly monetize.


you mean thousands of dollars?


Short stories don't make a lot of money. $100 is a huge accomplishment. The goal is usually to have them spike sales for a novel, but even there (a) it's iffy, and (b) most novels only sell a couple thousand copies.

Writing, unfortunately, remains something you have to get financially comfortable to be able to do... not a way to become financially comfortable. It's surprising that even in 2022 we haven't fixed that.


> It's surprising that even in 2022 we haven't fixed that.

If anything, it's much worse now than in the early 20th century. There were tons of working-class writers making a living at fiction writing, then. Tons as a proportion of the population, relative to today, anyway.

Compared to then, now, nobody reads fiction. Except porn (romance novels & erotica). Only genre that's still kinda, almost doing as well as several genres did back then. Possibly even better.


In the early 20th century written fiction had far less competition from filmed fiction, televised fiction, audio fiction, and video game fiction.

If looking at the ability to make a living off a creative pursuit we should make sure to account for the broader ways to do that today.

One thing we have done with writing (or music, or even video to some extent) is make it far easier to do as a hobby without it being a day job.


I wonder if it’s fair to include other fiction media in that comparison. Or even fiction + nonfiction. Specifically, I’m thinking about your comment about how now, nobody reads fiction (relative to then). Should we count consuming books then to books and TV now, since TV wasn’t a thing yet? I wonder how many people make a living working in entertainment media now compared to then.


I read a lot on online fiction platforms - AO3 and Wattpad are popular platforms but I mostly read Royal Road which seeks to copy asian web novel platforms.

Most of the writers are amateurs but they have diverse means of getting paid - some platforms like Wattpad and Webnovel help writers paywall later chapters, some writers do manually with a paid blog. Some ask for donations on kofi or patreon.

The thing is, speaking about someone who is putting in the effort and skill you'd need to publish for $100 in an anthology magazine - I wonder how much a writer like that makes on these platforms. $100 is only 25 five dollar doners. Maybe "1000 fans" is more profitable.

Here is a top writer from Royal Road - you can see they are pulling $1000 a month. This is surely unusual but it isn't bad https://www.patreon.com/MonroeByJahx


I don't understand why you would sell for that amount.


I wanted my story in print by somebody legit. Writing was not then and is not now my full time career, it's a hobby, but few things have compared to the excitement I felt when I heard I'd be published.

Many writers will advise you that it's ok to let your work go for free, if it'll get you exposure. I made a deal with myself that I'd charge something for it.


> I made a deal with myself that I'd charge something for it.

That's smart. It's probably different for short stories, but with novels, "free exposure" is usually problematic unless it's done right. (I'm launching a novel in '23.)

In principle, the ideal price at launch is $0, insofar as you never want price to be an issue for any reader, and you hope to set off an exponential word-of-mouth phenomenon that renders the first few days or weeks of sales irrelevant by comparison. The problem is that, empirically, you don't get the same quality of readers (as measured by likeliness to read, likeliness to finish, likeliness to review, likeliness to write a fair review, and likeliness to write a useful review) with free giveaways as you do when people buy it.

The S-Tier strat might be to give the book away for free while somehow finding a way to command the psychological investment that people would have in a book if they had paid $30 for it.


> The S-Tier strat might be to give the book away for free while somehow finding a way to command the psychological investment that people would have in a book if they had paid $30 for it.

There are authors who have had success with releasing on blogs chapter-a-month style or similar. In my opinion, if the work is good enough to catch people, it'll get engagement even if it's free, if you find an audience. Lots of authors these days also do Kickstarters and other novel fundraising techniques where they fund future work on the back of long-standing, free or nearly free work.


Because that's the market rate. The alternative is not to sell.


Wait until you see the lit-fic market.


To get people to read what you’ve written.


You don't do it for the money. You do it for exposure. If you sell a short story that goes viral, you'll probably get a six-figure advance (which is not as much as it sounds like) on your next novel. That said, the odds aren't great; writing is about the worst way to make money imaginable, in part because either there's no barrier to entry (self-publishing) or there are barriers to entry but they're dysfunctional and political (traditional publishing) and no one knows what's seriously good until it's been around for ~20 years.


"For the exposure" is a dangerous path. That said, there are a ton of ways in which writing, especially non-fiction, can be a loss leader for consulting, a day job, etc. I suppose it sucks a bit for others trying to make that writing their day job but I'm hardly going to campaign for gatekeeping all public authorship to protect those in the club.


You don't do it for the money.

*DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER*


Did anyone find it curious that the revision process highlights perceived moral impurities (immigrant deportation commentary, MAGA similarity) as story failures / problems?

There’s a profound sub-narrative here on self-censorship, what is or isn’t acceptable within the bounds of fiction, and how genre in-groups police themselves toward Acceptable Messages.


To me it seems conscientious. It is good to know if story elements are likely to trigger issues from some historical parallel or other such. This is kind of like taking a moment to consider any scientific experiment in order to check if it may approach or even exceed some moral boundaries. Everything is contextual, and these are not so much hard limits as they are social harmonics that one could tune into or reflect as well as avoid.


What you said I vibe with. But notice that even if it was presented in that precise context (“do you intend to invoke this theme?”) the author internalized it as story problems, hence we enter the territory of self-censorship.

Also, I think it would be very optimistic to assume an editor is deploying the word “problematic” about your story as anything other than an attack on its appropriateness and validity.

> where an eloquently written editorial review argued that it had problematic themes.


I think there are plenty of reasons other than self-censorship why someone choosing to write about a whole bunch of touchy political themes might think that someone interpreting a draft of their story in an entirely different light from the intended one might be a story problem rather than an editor problem. Especially if their response is to issue further drafts full of commentary on respective cultures, the virtues of national pride vs assimilation etc, not to drop it and write a story about saving the planet or talking tigers. Similarly, it might be very pessimistic to assume a review awarding a story "Editor's Choice" is an attack on its appropriateness, not great idea, but a bit liable to misinterpretation in current form

Either way, the ending the author actually ended up with feels a lot stronger than it might have been had the protagonist concluded that rosy revisionist history actually was the solution to all a nation's problems or that he couldn't possibly feel any sense of belonging in the US.


> Also, I think it would be very optimistic to assume an editor is deploying the word “problematic” about your story as anything other than an attack on its appropriateness and validity.

It's also plausible that it's "problematic" because the white savior theme has been so overdone it won't make the story interesting or stand out in any way. That's certainly problematic from a writer's perspective.


Yeah, no.

I'm an award winning published author and wokeness has taken over the publishing space to the point where you can't publish _anything_ negative about a few sacred cows, which are obvious to anyone with a working brain.

I'll bet my bottom dollar it was a white woman lecturing to a brown man why he's being racist too.


Congrats to superamit! Well done with your persistence and I hope Uncanny is receptive to your future submissions. I'm excited to read the story.

Disclaimer: light self-promo. Are others interested in more publishing posts like these? I've documented the journey to publication stories with stats, rejections, and a sense of the work involved for most of the short fiction I've published in literary journals. It's been cathartic and encouraging to share the entire process.

My most notable piece[1] ended up making it into The Best American Mystery Stories[2] a few years ago.

[1]: https://arsenalofwords.com/2018/10/30/how-loathing-travel-pu...

[2]: https://arsenalofwords.com/2019/10/01/how-a-regional-writing...


writing has to be among the worst ways to make money, sorry to say

you need top .5% talent and work ethic to maybe earn a lower-middle class salary

A labor of love, as it's said


> writing has to be among the worst ways to make money

It’s being a musician, actually. Most writers have the skills to maintain good side gigs of some kind or another. Musicians have to dedicate more of their time to musicianship, and often end up on the lower side of the pay scale. Sure, there will be a few with a profitable clientele paying for private lessons and tutoring, but that’s far more rare.


Most of the musicians I know make the bulk of their music-related income from private tutoring, its what funds the rest of it. They usually also will have a day job of some sort.

Recording and producing music, making music videos, etc is a massive cost center that may or may not break even. Usually not.

Playing live gigs is usually a money loser for most - venues often have extremely unfavourable terms (especially when starting out - a lot of places are pay to play, where you have to market and sell the tickets and at best get to keep what's left over after venue hire is covered).

The real money is basically in teaching the offspring of upper middle class people how to play an instrument.


> The real money is basically in teaching the offspring of upper middle class people how to play an instrument.

Agreed, but even then it’s bordering on low income. I saw an article a while back that claimed some musicians were making big money giving lessons online, but I never followed up on it. Apparently the really good ones could reach a larger pool of more potential students and double or triple their income.


The side gig used by many "writers" is to establish yourself as one of many mentors that offers guidance for get rich quick schemes such as the blacklist.

In reality, for most writing is a fading interest. It's a skill that anyone can really pick up if they wanted to but doing so is easy to learn and hard to master. You can go long periods of time writing and never improve.

Due to how the system as whole is designed most writers never improve. It's just how it works in the end because of the lack of a coherent structure or guidance system. Only if you belong to pre-established writing groups will you even really have a chance at learning it.

Sure there are several references openly available online, but all it can teach you is syntax. What you need to be a good writer is experience, training and mentoring which most people will never gain the opportunity of having. And even to those that do, it's a lifelong endeavor and one that requires complex knowledge in a variety of fields. It's one that most that pick it up will never be able to comprehend themselves or when they do, it's too late and trying to do so is fundamentally impossible for them due to their situation.


> The side gig used by many "writers" is to establish yourself as one of many mentors that offers guidance for get rich quick schemes such as the blacklist.

Wasn’t this Charlie Kaufman’s take, or was it Quentin Tarantino? I remember reading an interview with one of them who riffed on this complaint. For some reason, I think it was Kaufman, because I was obsessed with his process at the time.


There are more options than the past depending on genre niche and whether you're trying to entertain or write "literary works".

For various genres of the fantasy genre there's a fairly well trodden road nowadays of going from royalroad.com (with patreon) to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited.

royalroad.com lets people build massive followings and then translate them into patreon and other monetisation.

The audiences in the litrpg space right now are voracious and are fairly forgiving of typo's/grammar so long as they enjoy the story.

I'm not sure the same could've been said 10 or even 5 years ago. But again it's fairly genre specific.


Fascinating stuff. I had no idea people were reading (or producing) “literary RPG”. It’s like peeking into an alternative world:

> I… finally did it! And I also leveled as a [Demon Larva] thanks to the experience gained from leveling [Identification]! It was a total success!

> I could distribute my Stat Points and Skill Point later. For now, I focused on what was important. I glanced at the pebble closest to me and activated my [Identification]—


Yeah, it's a rapidly expanding an evolving genre with its own conventions and quite a bit of influence from Chinese webnovels and anime. Your average litrpg usually involves a System Apocalypse or an Isekai Protagonist.

System Apocalypse - God like Magical Computer "System" that tracks peoples stats/skills, recognises their feats and rewards them arrives on earth and integrates the world into "The System" usually in the form of a magical cli gui that appears in peoples vision as they go about their day.

Isekai - Average person going about their business dies in an accident and is reincarnated on another (magical) world with memories of their past life intact.


And I'd say that was a pretty good result overall.

For what may be more relatable to many here, publishing a technical (or tech-adjacent, i.e. more popular industry takes of various kinds) book may be career-enhancing, even significantly so, in various ways. But you still will likely just make a few $K in direct moneys.I did a book about open source history/business models/etc. and it's been good--even was asked to do a second edition/done book signings at event/etc.--but still only made single-digit thousands of dollars directly.


Appreciate that you probably didn't want to be accused of shameless promotion but I'm genuinely interested; what is the name of your book?


How Open Source Ate Software (from Apress)--think it's on Safari.

I've done book signings at Linux Foundation events and it's led to me doing a number of internal projects that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.


I write, purely for my own pleasure, as as you say, it’s absolutely no way to make a living. I’ve hundreds of shorts, a few dozen novellas, and a couple of novels - with which I have precisely zero interest in doing anything. Writing them was the point.

This, unfortunately, has been the case practically for as long as literature has existed - very, very few authors make anything more than a pittance from their work in their lifetimes, and historically a majority of authors were the scions of wealthy or at least comfortably middle class families.

Now, thankfully, the publishing landscape is substantially more democratic, however the financial hurdles to being an author remain very real - it’s a side job, out of necessity, until you get published - and then it’s still probably a side job.

So, yes, it’s a labour of love. I don’t think anyone goes into writing to make bank, but rather because they have an insatiable urge to write, or to convey an idea, or whatever it may be - but financial success doesn’t weigh into it - in fact, for most, it’s an expensive hobby, insofar as it’s rather time consuming. Me, I just write whilst babysitting my telescope through the nights. Keeps the fingers warm.


Genre fiction like S/F has different rules. In S/F you're taught to write in a way that will get you published, and paid for your work. I posted this a couple weeks ago, it's a quote from an interview with Ted Chiang:

TC: I think the reaction varies, because science fiction is a more commercial genre. There are a lot more people in science fiction whose goal is to make a living from writing fiction by publishing one or more novels a year. And people who enter science fiction generally receive more messaging about fiction writing as a sole source of income than, say, people entering mainstream fiction. The messaging there is different: get an MFA, teach; it’s understood that your teaching position supports your career as a writer. For writers entering science fiction, that’s not really a thing yet. We’re maybe getting there, but the messaging they receive is mostly: Be very prolific.

https://culture.org/an-interview-with-ted-chiang/

So basically most people don't write S/F "just for fun", and I'm pretty sure that was never the case and all the greats and less-well-known greats of the genre were all professional writers.


I’m not sure if that’s so, or if it’s selection bias at work - the SF&F writers you’ve heard of, whose stories actual and literary you know, are the ones who plugged away at it to make a living. What TC says is true - and it has been so for a long while. So many of the greats ground their way up through the pulps - I collected the back catalogue of Analog under its various guises as I found it rather fascinating to see authors develop chronologically — you can practically see them honing their formulae in real time.

I write SF&F for shits and giggles, as I don’t like the idea of writing things to be commercially successful, having spent much of my existence focussed on commercial success elsewhere. Rather, I write for the catharsis and the vicarious experience of crafting a world and a narrative. I don’t know that I’m alone in that, but then again, I don’t know that I’m not - but I can’t believe myself to be particularly unusual.


>writing has to be among the worst ways to make money, sorry to say

Depends. I left my high paying job and had mostly burned through my savings until selling programming ebooks saved me. Not saying that writing was the best option, but it was the first that started paying my bills consistently. Of course, the fact that my monthly expenses was around $150 helped a lot. I've now written 12 books and the past two years has brought my savings back to a comfortable level.


I would say you have to be in the top 0.5% to make minimum wage as a fiction writer.

If you want to write listicles, sure you don't need as much talent and you can make above minimum wage.


I'm actually skeptical that (mostly) young people writing listicles on content farms are making minimum wage--or at least much above it.


I've met people who've worked at these. They pay more than 25 dollars. Around a couple hundred. If you don't live in a third world country you can't afford this lifestyle, which leads to the poor quality you see due to lack of English proficiency.

Nowadays, the content farm has become websites like Webcomics and Webnovels which offer a variety of tools for authors to be able to make a living. In reality like the pre-existing mangaka business, you will never be able to have a stable amount of money each year as you struggle to keep afloat you cannot improve or get better. The game has been rigged by the publishers since the 80s. And only the very elite are given the opportunity to succeed in the correct social circles. For which most people will never be given the opportunity to even partake in. You can apply for workshops and the naught but if you aren't from the right family or friends with the right people your chances are close to none. It's the same in the music industry and pervades everywhere even in technology.


I'd be curious if short fiction writing was more lucrative several decades ago when literary magazines were a larger force. Was it more possible to survive as an independent writer before, or have the economics of writing always been so terrible?


Short stories used to be the more lucrative form. Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald made most of their income from selling short stories to magazines like Collier's or Esquire, not novels.


Alexandre Dumas serial published The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo - being paid by the word - which is why they're so long - but also extra impressive how good they turned out.

The stories were not finished while the beginnings were being published.


That's right, I was forgetting serialized novels. They were big, too.

That method of Dumas was how Dostoevsky worked, at least some of the time--not knowing exactly what he was doing in a novel until after its first chapters had already appeared in a magazine. Presumably his gambling debts had something to do with this habit of working, although he supposedly had a case of what they call "hypergraphia," and could produce an incredibly amount of writing in a short amount of time.


In recent years this has changed to screenplays and sites like the blacklist, where every unexperienced writer posts a script for their chance at the megamillions. The reality is that for the most part the site is rigged in favour of those already in the industry and rating are chosen by those with the largest wallets.


You could in the past have made a career writing exclusively short fiction. Over time, however, short fiction became understood as a stepping stone towards novel writing where the "real money" was. However I would never call writing short fiction lucrative in any sense, not even if you're Ted Chiang.


"[Arthur Conan Doyle's] first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was written in three weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co on 20 November 1886, which gave Doyle £25 (equivalent to £2,900 in 2019) in exchange for all rights to the story."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle#Literary_ca...

This very good story sold for about 3X the OP's story, at a time when print was the dominant medium.


From what I've read, people did make a living writing short stories at one point. You probably still had to write a LOT.

There were many more pubs to publish to and more people bought short story anthologies.


Back in the pulp era it was common for authors to churn out books under multiple names. There’s definitely a bit of that (including the questionable quality) in the self-publishing market but it’s much less visible.


Things like rent and food were also relatively cheaper back then too.


Rent as a percentage of income is remarkably steady historically because it’s always as high as the market will bear. That’s the rationale behind Georgist Land Value Taxes. You can pay it to the government and the landowner or the landowner, the amount of rent will be the same. Food has gotten cheaper as well as tastier and higher quality over time. The proportion of income spent on food has been dropping for well over 100 years.


> Rent as a percentage of income is remarkably steady historically

https://www.realestatewitch.com/rent-to-income-ratio-2022/

and

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/diff...

and

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-ame...

So, depends on what you mean by steady. ~3%-ish growth (at the worst) in my book is not steady.

But yea, totally less expensive and wider availability of high quality food is great to be reminded of, thanks!


This is a major factor. Also, day jobs were a lot more chill. Writers still complained about having to go to an office job, but you could use the copious downtime on some of the work. You wouldn't want to do hardcore creative first-draft writing at your office job, but you could edit for typos and do background reading.

These days, so many fascistic surveillance technologies have been deployed to squeeze the downtime out of existence for most jobs. You could have a 1950s day job (well, if you were middle class) and be a writer, but you can't really have a 2020s day job and be a writer, because jobs are so much more stressful.


> but you can't really have a 2020s day job and be a writer, because jobs are so much more stressful.

This is disproven by the large majority of authors having a day job. Most people can’t have a day job and be a writer but the sentence is just as true as “Most people can’t be a writer.”


It used to be possible to make a living doing nothing but writing for "pulps".

This hasn't been a realistic goal since... IDK, the 50s? 60s?


Writing is a solid way to make money in specific genres, however, especially if one is self-published. A business-saavy writer can make a good amount of money writing romance (which makes more money than most other genres combined) or self-help.


My wife is heading down that path right now. There are people she collabs with that made $200k in their first year of writing romance novels (but they wrote like, six books in a year. You need to churn them out quick to make that much money, usually in series of books, not one-offs).

My wife is in marketing for her day job and has been using that knowledge to help target and generate interest in her books, and it seems to be paying off, as her preorders are eclipsing quite a few established authors in the groups she's in, and this is her first book.

When she had half the preorders she does now, a friend was saying she could probably expect around $2k in sales in her first month, judging by the preorder numbers, so by the time it releases she might be seeing 2-3x or even more than that.


> (but they wrote like, six books in a year. You need to churn them out quick to make that much money, usually in series of books, not one-offs).

It helps that romance novels tend to be way on the short side. Self-published can be even shorter than the traditionally published stuff—a lot of those authors seem to get away with charging $4+ for maybe 70 pages, for each entry in their tens-of-books-long series. Much clearer path to some reasonable return than writing 350+ page thrillers or big ol' fantasy doorstops.


Well, my wife's first book is 90k words, so, right around the size of those thrillers (it almost was going to be 120k+ words, but it started getting too tight to the time she had booked for an editor for her liking).

But you're still not wrong, in general (although 70 pages might be a bit on the low side, on average). At least her next project is going to be a novella for an anthology at around 30k words. But her next novel will probably be similar to her first. She's going to try to release 3-4 her first year, and a couple novellas, while working a full time job. Of course because of that she's not doing too much besides work, write, market, stress, and sleep right now.


Right—sorry, I guess I should have mentioned that of course there are larger entries in that genre. It's more that what's considered a salable, stand-alone work has a distribution that skews far lower than in a lot of other genres, which you can see by looking at the shelves in used book stores (and self-publishing seems to have pushed that range even lower). Didn't intend it as a judgement of the genre, to be clear, and I hope it didn't come across that way, just an observation—in fact, as noted, I think that's part of why it's practically the only genre someone can enter with a hope of maybe making some real money, these days, beyond the lottery-odds of the other genres. Even sci-fi and fantasy, which are doing much better than lit-fic and others, aren't nearly as favorable to new authors who want to make anything resembling a living at it.


A former manager of mine had a whole side gig writing direct-to-kindle romance and erotica for quite a while. Not bad money in it either.


Those two seem like the best time:money ratio genres. Lots of turn over, lots of fans with pretty forgiving quality filters.

I'd be happy selling my one book fairly well. Though I keep hearing that it's series and series of series that do the best.


Yeah, I remember a study they did with music where they separated groups and in each group different bands would come to dominate based on luck (whoever got momentum first). Wish I could find it, it was quite a time ago.


> Yeah, I remember a study they did with music where they separated groups and in each group different bands would come to dominate based on luck (whoever got momentum first). Wish I could find it, it was quite a time ago.

I’m not familiar with that study, and I try to keep up with the literature. You might be very interested to read about the historical rise of the grunge genre as an example of the kind of luck you are talking about. There was definitely a magical kind of serendipity at work between all the different musicians and bands who were up and coming at the time.

Some of the one on one interviews with the key players are amazing. If they didn’t pick up a certain phone call or move to a specific city or play music with this one person, entire careers would never have been made.


Similarly, I wish I could design typefaces for a living, but it is simply not realistic. It would be a dream to do it full time; ecstasy to me.


Like all the "jobs" that should be done by people who don't need money to sustain themselves so kids of rich parents or self made people after they hit it big.

But it goes with all content creators - sports - academia, getting PHD or Professor title.

Funny thing is that a lot of people try to become boxers or writers, football players as it seems easy to "make it" but I don't know if there is "car sports" rags to riches stories, to do car sports one has to be quite on the rich side anyway.

But still to go path of Mike Tyson you still have to be .5% talent and work ethic and for quite some time getting scraps as payments.


superamit (or anyone else who writes fiction really), would you publish your stories on a "substack for fiction"?

I already built it, although it is in Portuguese. https://www.confabulistas.com.br

It would be easy to translate to English and try it in the US market. Is there any interest for that?

It is just like Substack. You create your page, people subscribe and get your fiction by email. The main difference is that people can read your books from the beginning, from the first chapter, in installments. With Substack (or any newsletter platform) new people can only get the future emails from the time they subscribed. In my site people will receive the first installment/chapter of the book (you can have several books published in there, one can be "Short stories").

It has the "paid subscribers" feature also.

I built it mostly to myself, as I am starting a side-career as a fiction writer wanted to own my audience. Fiction writers currently don't have a good platform to both distribute their work and gather an audience. What I built does the job pretty well I think.

Any interest?


Professional author here. Personally, this wouldn't be for me, at least not right now. But it may be for others, and it's neat that you built it!

Why it's not for me:

These days, the choice between self publishing and traditional publishing is really a question of what I want my job to be. If I'm willing to be a writer/editor/publicist/graphic designer/etc., then modern digital distribution means self publishing makes a lot of sense. It potentially also makes a lot of sense for people who already have largish followings, as it increases profits per sale. (People with following can also monetize those followings directly via things like Patreon, or likely your "paid subscribers" feature.)

For me, though, all I really feel comfortable doing is writing. I don't want to publicize, or format books, or cultivate a following that I can turn into patrons and monetize. I'm a slow writer, so unlikely to produce a steady enough stream of content to make a serialization/patron model viable. I also strongly dislike being on social media, which would really limit my exposure.

Being in control of publicity is empowering for some authors, but for me it would make the work harder, not easier. So I prefer traditional publishing, where my only job is to write the stories and have professional interaction with agents and editors. Self-advocacy isn't a major part of my job as an author, and I'm an author who doesn't want it to be. I'm to have (and indirectly pay) agents and editors to let me have a writing career without needing to do work I find onerous.

Best of luck to you, though. And things change, so who knows? Maybe someday something like this will be exactly what I need. I know a brilliant author who was traditionally published for decades, but has now reclaimed her rights and is self publishing to much greater satisfaction.


In my opinion, that's an interesting idea.

I started writing short stories a couple of years ago, and I created a Hugo website to host them: https://crooked.ink. The main issues with a blog are that it's hard to get an audience from scratch, and it's hard to be found with all the SEO effort you can do.

I also tried to submit a couple of stories to webzines and I got published once for free, but I really don't think I'll ever do it for a living.

What I wish more and still didn't get, though, it's a _feedback_ for my stories. So maybe the project could be intriguing for this, if it can get you closer to an audience.


Have you seen the Short Story Substack[1]? I appreciate how forthcoming the editor is with the stats.

[1]: https://shortstory.substack.com/


I'm not writing serialized fiction at the moment, so probably not for me. I'm sure others will be interested, though, especially if you can collect a community of readers around the site.


I personally will use it to also publish my short stories (in my case, very short, less than 2,000 words) and gather an audience around it, not just serialized fiction.


>The main difference is that people can read your books from the beginning, from the first chapter, in installments.

Maybe market it as "Learn to write as Dickens did".

on edit: To get writers on board of course.


I'm someone else, but I just wanted to say: I hope your project succeeds.

I've thought about this for a long time and have a lot of insight into the problem, and thoughts about the pitfalls. If you'd like to talk, post an email address (can be throwaway) and I'll reach out. I'm a novelist myself, with a book coming out in early '23.

The most important thing, over the next 20 years, is making sure that the self-publishing ecosystem isn't controlled or controllable by companies (e.g., Amazon). Amazon are currently the good guys (believe it or not) relative to traditional publishers [1] and chain bookstores, but God knows what they are doing with their algorithm, and we can't let them become a SPOF for the self-publishing ecosystem.

----

[1] Actually, the editors at the publishing houses themselves are a pretty good set of people (and, at least in the US, very underpaid). It's the rest of the trad-pub ecosystem--the tastemakers, the literary agents, the various sausage-makers who decide which books get celebrity endorsements--who can eat a bowl of taint cancer.


I appreciate the offer! I definitely would like to hear your thoughts. You can email me at contato [at] confabulistas.com.br

Thanks!


> I spent 22 hours, 18 minutes, and 47 seconds writing and editing “India World” across 42 sessions in Google Docs. (Not including hours more spent editing on paper, revising the story at workshops, or reading critiques.)

Given the quality of the work, I suspect that 2x-5x that many hours were spent on developing and revising the story (the parenthetical part). So let's call it 66 hours total.

Later:

> 8/27/2020 - RUOXI FROM TOR.COM EMAILED TO BUY THE STORY! They offered $1422.80 for exclusive digital, audio, and ebook rights for one year, non-exclusive afterward. Likely publication: early 2021. I said yes!

So, ballpark $20/hr. Some commenters have noted the low pay for this kind of work. How it's a labor of love rather than a living. And Tor apparently pays top dollar. On top of the fee, there's a profit sharing program, which starts to sound pretty good. But again, this looks to be the ceiling.

What's more interesting are the non-financial terms. The author can sell the work to others after one year. Depending on whether the author retains copyright (seems to be implied), this could be a pretty interesting way to go. I'm thinking about things like expansion into a novel, movie or other derivative works, for example. The acceptance letter doesn't quite make it clear how this works. How does it work?


Yep for any reputable publication, the rights revert to the author after some reasonable amount of time. Then they can sell option rights or expand etc however they see fit. (If a pub asks for rights in perpetuity be VERY wary!)

Optioning for TV or film is usually the most lucrative, but can be very difficult, especially for new writers breaking into the field. This is especially true for short stories. One big exception is Arrival, which was based on Ted Chiang’s short story, which have paved the way for other short stories to get optioned in similar fashion.


Back in 2013 I published my first book. It's a collection of "funny" texts that I wrote during my blog years. It was hard as you can imagine to publish it. Even harder to make money out of it. My publisher is from Portugal and I'm from Brazil, they sold the books in both countries. I know for a fact that some of my friends bought the book, but they never showed on the publisher spreadsheet of how many books they sold and how much I've earned. It was a proud moment of my life nevertheless, but it would be more fun if I have made some money out of it.


Nice! Purchased a copy. For those looking you need to add author name - doesn't show up with just title on amazon

Haven't seen this before:

>this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.


Tor books are all DRM free, and have been for a while. It's nice to be able to archive purchases. Also when using an ereader where artwork isn't always very accessible you can just open the zip file and look at it with a better image viewer. A particular bonus when artwork is really good, or if printing out a map will make reading more enjoyable etc


Wow, thanks! TBH I didn't even know Tor was selling it as a Kindle single for 99 cents.

And DRM-free! Cool. Feel free to pirate, I guess.


Tor’s been selling their stuff DRM-free for about as long as ebooks have existed.


I'm curious about the stats for SF readers/writers/publishers. As the parent post relates, compared to the past there are a lot less publishers and it would be extremely difficult to be a professional SF short story writer as your sole occupation. Has the pool of writers grown or stayed the same? What about readers?


I was once interested in how self publishing actually works so I spent an hour or two putting a pdf together with Chuck Norris facts that I found on the internet and published it as a paperback. The book is still up for sale, I've made more than $10,000 from it.


Are they actual facts or joke facts? If jokes, did you have to worry about source material? Also, did you have to get permission from Norris' agency?


Do you have more about this? Where did you print the book and where are you selling it?


Thanks to the author for sharing this experience. Interesting!


Very surprised that the author was paid per word. Is that still a thing in publishing?


It’s as reasonable a measure as any of the level of effort / output in a work, so yes it’s common in short stories and magazine pieces afaik. I’ve heard of rates anywhere from 10 cents to a dollar per word depending on genre and publication.

Generally you’ll be given a size to fit within, so it’s not like you can go Dickens on it and crank up the word count to cover your rent.


Yes, but it depends on where you submit. I've seen literary journals pay in contributor copies (aka nothing), token amounts—a few dollars, a rate per page, or a fixed rate up front. Genres like sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and crime or mystery are more likely to pay per word. Not sure why that is.


How much do you earn if your short story ends up in a movie?


It can vary a lot.

If a short story is made into a movie, the first step is for the production company to secure the rights to the IP. This is usually done through an options contract, wherein the writer sells the production company the exclusive but time-limited write to make a film adaptation. When their option period expires, the production company has to either renew the option for more money, or give up on the project.

How much money an option sells for depends on the profiles of both the author and the producer/studio involved. My first option contract for short fiction was $2500 for a one year exclusive option--slightly more than I made when I published the story originally. My most recent option contract was $12,500 for an 18 month exclusivity period.

Authors with large backlists can have lots of option contracts always expiring and renewing, and often have this as a meaningful income stream even if nothing ever actually gets produced.


Zero, the WGA is incentivized to keep writers out of it instead of hiring more.


Both parts of this are false.

I already replied to the parent question explaining how authors of short fiction do, in fact, make money when their work is adapted.

The WGA is a union whose members pay dues based on their writing income. The guild is incentivized to maximize their membership, and to maximize the earning of those members.

I'm an associate member of the WGAw--someone who's worked in the industry, but not done enough work yet to qualify for full membership--and I've never encountered any of the exclusionary attitude you suggest.


Optimistic SF is retro SF. Thanks!


Nice story!!


Thank you!


You made a bit over 1k. 3 years of effort for 1.4k. You failed.


It's a pretty terrible, hackneyed, non-story, now I've read it. Flag me down all you like. Seems like the author is more interested in the stats about writing than the actual writing.

Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the second. The author seems to think writing is hard and slow. It is slow, but after the first decade or two it gets quicker when the inspiration comes.


Neal Stephenson is a very poor storyteller. Most of his books are excuses for writing encyclopedic entries on certain topics, and packaging it as a story to make money.


https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Mother Earth Mother Board is a great example of storytelling. I was using him as a sidestep from Crichton, given that's where the author is saying he's at.

HG Wells or Margaret Atwood would also be good places to start, when looking for examples of the craft of short-story writing.


Margaret Atwood is a terrible writer. If you're going to put someone next to Wells for mastery of the craft, that should be P.G Wodehouse. I would add Jerome K. Jerome to the list, also.

Then of course there are master storycrafters in SF like James Tiptree Jr., Cordwainer Smith, Ted Chiang, Clifford D. Simak, Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Brian Aldiss, Fredric Brown, Theodore Sturgeon, and others I'm forgetting. And H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Clark Ashton Smith, R. E. Howard and Arthur Machen from the strict fantasy side.


I was trying to ease the OP in, coming from Michael Crichton, not give an exhaustive list.

Also your list is 100% male.


James Tiptree Jr was female. But yes, most of my list is male. Would you like to propose more female writers?

Edit: if you haven't read anything from Alice Sheldon (a.k.a. James Tiptree Junior, a.k.a. Raccoona Sheldon) I wholeheartedly recommend you chase down anything of hers and read it. It is not an accident that she is first in my list because she is, for me, one of the absolute best SF authors of all time. Same for Cordwainer Smith. It is distressing to see their names having faded into obscurity, with modern readers.


Any recommendations on where to start with Tiptree/Sheldon?


I prefer shorter stories so I would recommend two of my favorites of Tiptree's: The Screwfly Solution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution) and The Man who Walked Home, included in the collection of shorts Ten Thousand Light Years from Home.

Or take a look at wikipedia where there's a list of her works and see which ones have titles that sound interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tiptree_Jr.#Works

I think you'll find a few that catch the eye :)


Thank you! I have not been able to get into any of his stuff for this exact reason. Interesting ideas, but I just don't give any ducks about the characters.


It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the second

I am a professional artist and I have found it very helpful to track my work at the resolution of a half an hour. I can quote prices with confidence that I’ll make a decent wage for the time I expect them to take. I can look at how much time I’ve spent so far and decide it’s time to stop noodling on one part and make sure other parts don’t get neglected before I do a final polish pass. I can experiment with new working methods and see if the get me to something that meets my standards faster, once I get used to them. It helps me keep my life from being dominated by projects that sprawl out of control, too.

It may not be relevant to anyone looking at the final art how long it took, but it’s super relevant to me. And keeping similar data is relevant to anyone who wants to try and make a serious go at doing a thing.


> Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton.

I'd love for fiction writing to be better, generally, but if you're looking to make a career of writing—which of those made/makes the most money?

[EDIT] Incidentally, I'd put Stephenson on about the same level as Crichton. Worse in some respects, better in others.


I wasn't recommending Tolstoy or Shakespeare for a reason...

Why does "making money" have anything to do with producing art or working on a craft you love? Virtually every fine artist we now regard as a genius didn't make real money in their lifetime. The people selling their art retroactively make the money.


I imagine it took the author much longer to write, revise, etc. the work than it did to write this measurement blog. Where are you getting the notion the author prioritizes measuring their writing time investment vs the writing itself?

It’s okay to just not like a story you know.


It's clearly not ok, when you get flagged down to invisibility in a forum like this.


My guess is he was going after some subtle points that are not normally the focus in this genre, so for many readers it is going to come across as hollow.




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