Why (Nearly) Every Novelist I Know Has a Day Job

It’s difficult to sustain a life by writing; there’s zero shame in working a 9-to-5, too.

These collected works earned the author $1.59 in royalties.

Whenever the topic of writers and pay comes up, I always enjoy dropping this little nugget: “Nearly every novelist I know has a day job.”

I don’t mean the novelists whose indie-press masterpiece sold a grand total of 15 copies (14 of them to family) before disappearing into the ether; I know mega-successful novelists, the kind whose books were optioned for movies and television shows on the way to the New York Times bestseller lists, who nonetheless hold down a 9-to-5.

Some do it for the healthcare. Others because they genuinely liked the jobs they were working before they hit it big, and have zero urge to quit now. But I also suspect there’s another element at work: fear.

Writing books doesn’t yield a consistent income, to put it mildly. According to a new study by the Authors Guild, the median pay for full-time writers was $20,300 in 2017; for those writing part-time, $6,080. Among those part-time writers, income has dropped noticeably, from $10,500 in 2009. To make matters worse, the number of magazine and newspaper venues has declined precipitously over the past few years, restricting the opportunities to supplement income via…