JA Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith have proven that “starving writer” is a myth. Konrath earned $100,000 in 3 weeks from his Kindle ebooks. Smith makes more than enough to make a very good living in USA with his 90+ books and their derivatives.
Konrath’s Amazon KDP account screenshot (click to enlarge):
Read Smith’s arguments here or below:
Where else does this myth come from?
Duh? The answer is simple. It comes from all the people who are, for one reason or another, simply too afraid to try mailing out their fiction regularly to places who buy it. Or too afraid to put the stories up electronically. Or only have one novel up and are wondering why they are not selling like Konrath. Or writers trapped in the agent myth, rewriting book after book for an employee.
For all those writers, it would be impossible to make a living at writing fiction. And thus, when you talk to them about making money, they are telling you the truth.
From their viewpoint.
How about a writer who has sold three novels and for the first time understands how the money flows? Or has gotten five to ten stories up electronically. Those early writers are saying the same thing, of course. Selling one genre book a year is not enough to make a living writing. Putting up just a few books electronically is not enough to make a living. Unless, you are fantastically lucky.
But most of us aren’t that lucky, so a writer with one book a year, who has bought in to the writing slow myth can’t make a living, and they are telling other writers the truth as well.
From their viewpoint.
So what about when you hear this myth spouted by a big name bestseller? I heard a New York Times bestseller in a keynote speech once tell 500 people there were only two hundred people in the nation making a living at fiction. Kris and I almost fell out of our chairs laughing, but we were just about the only people in the room laughing. Everyone else thought he was right. As it happens, I’m sitting next to him on a panel the very next hour, so as we were talking, I turned to him and said, “You know that 200 number is totally wrong.”
He look sort of stunned and said, “That’s what I had always heard.” (The myth hits again and is repeated by big-name writer who is making millions.)
I said, “If that’s the case, then don’t you find it pretty amazing that there are seven of the two hundred on this one panel?”
He looked down the panel at the seven of us, all full-time fiction writers sitting on the panel. Then I asked the 100 people in the room how many were writers making at least $80,000 per year with their fiction writing. Five more people, two of whom I recognized, raised their hands. Twelve of us in the same room at a writer’s convention. That stunned the keynote speaker, let me tell you, and we ended up spending the entire panel talking about this myth. And where that 200 number came from in the myth.
Since 2003, I have broken the “myth” and no longer believe in any naysayers.
