Can You Afford to Get Published? Well, yes

The original post, Can You Afford to Get Published?, by Kate Flora appeared on the Maine Crime Writers website, but I am re-posting this from The Passive Voice because of the many insightful comments that it drew.

Author Flora laments the fact that she makes so little money for all of her efforts at writing. She uses — and seems dependent upon — traditional publishers.

She seems to have never considered self-publishing, and the commenters on The Passive Voice provide ringing endorsements of the concept.

Those interested in — or dubious about — self-publishing should take a look.

Can You Afford to Get Published? |

Source: Can You Afford to Get Published? | The Passive Voice | A Lawyer’s Thoughts on Authors, Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing

Usually, published writers like to paint a glowy picture of the world we inhabit. It is true that, having struggled often for years to finally become published, we are grateful for the chance to get our work out there and have it read, and I beam with pride when I look at my row of published books. But this week, after putting together some figures for the past twelve months, I estimate that I’m working for about a dollar a day. I thought it might be interesting to readers to have some insight into the published author’s reality.

I published my first mystery, Chosen for Death, back in 1994. For those early books in my Thea Kozak series, the advances ran around $5-6,000, and I usually earned royalties on top of that.

. . . .

I puttered along with my advances in this range until I sold my breakthrough book, Steal Away, (published as Katharine Clark) which had a big advance, was a book club selection, and was sold as an audio book. The book did not earn back that big advance and so, since publishers considering buying a book look at sales numbers, my happy midlist career was ruined.

Kate Flora’s books on Amazon.

Tags: Kate Flora, The Passive Voice