Yes, especially this. For goodness sakes, writing is such a solitary, lonely profession, that if you can't commiserate with fellow writers, you may as well cut off your hands and bury your keyboard.jnfr said:And rant when you must! I like to think that we're all among friends here.
Excellent! Can't wait to hear from you.FrankZubek said:Jim Thanks. I'll email you before Sunday and we'll talk for sure
Julie is exactly right. My parents are self employed and so am I (separate businesses). So I have both witnessed a small business starting up and experienced it myself. Three years of consistent work is really when you will start to see steady income generated from your business. Five years is usually what it takes to be established. Maybe not world famous, but definitely established.Bards and Sages (Julie) said:Publishing is a business, and it needs to be approached like any business. The typical business loses money it's first three years. You don't start a business because you have to pay the bills. You start a business because you have a long term plan to make it successful.
I like that idea.T.J. Dotson said:I'm almost wondering if a 'Barter' thread of some sort would a good idea.
Shelagh, why is his income from a book limited to one month? There's another way of doing the math. Let's say it takes him 100 hours to write a book. If you can write 500 words an hour, a modest amount, that's a 50,000 word book.Shelagh said:Oh dear, I'm new here and my response will probably be seen as harsh and unhelpful. Even if I try to soften the blow, the words will still seem negative. Deep intake of breath.
Dear Frank, Writing is not the best way to make extra money. It takes up hours of your time with little reward. Even if your sales were ten times the present sales, it would not compensate you for all those hours spent writing, editing and polishing your work. One hundred sales per month instead of ten sales per month would net you $35 for $0.99 ebooks. You could earn far more than this per month by doing an extra shift stacking shelves. (Joanna Trollope wrote a story, The Rector's Wife, about a vicar's wife who took a job in a supermarket stacking shelves so that she could pay for private schooling for her daughter. Joanna Trollope has probably never stacked a shelf in her life, but she knew that even someone with the intelligence and talents of a vicar's wife, would need to take a job that earned money. Suggesting that writing would be a good way for a character in a book to earn money would not be realistic.) What I'm trying to say is that writing is a long term investment that might never pay off, whereas real money can be earned in the short term by taking an extra job. If you need the money now, writing isn't your best option.
Sorry to be so brutal, but you did say that you wanted to face facts!
