Most authors never hit the big time, but a great many to manage a solid and comfortable income from their writing, while the majority will always need to supplement their writing earnings with other jobs.
The Crafty Writer has added to figures released by The Times recently about how much average authors earn in the UK - and it will likely not surprise you that it is not a rosy picture. Most authors, it seems, earn a third of the UK average wage and two thirds of them therefore have to hold down additional jobs to continue writing.
Fiona Veitch Smith at The Crafty Writer, has some interesting experience to impart related directly to this issue. In her seventh year as a writer, she has experienced a noticeable increase in income, which she attributes to a number of specific factors outlined in her article: Can You Earn Money as a Writer? The article is well worth the read as Fiona goes on to offer some practical to help you start earning as a writer, and provides a stack of links which you will almost certainly find useful.
Very few of us will shorten that ten years of graft and poverty to establish ourselves as writers, and many of us even then will not manage more than a low level income, but we don not do it for the money, right..?
Writing and publishing your book is merely the first step. Most important is spreading the word to thrust it under as many eager reading eyes as you can. But readers are not the only connections you should be making when promoting your book.
Co-operative marketing alongside another author might be an effective way to combine effort and energy for cross promotion of published products. The idea of co-operative promotion is a key element in online web2.0 marketing techniques, yet most authors fail to recognise its potential for ‘traditional’ book content promotion.
A recent post over at Writing and Publishing News, talks in some detail about the idea of cross promotion between authors. As a web person myself, I can relate to the ideas in that article having employed similar techniques to develop an online audience for blogs and websites.
Shake off any preconceptions about keeping all your promotional energy to yourself and learn the benefits of promoting other authors as you promote yourself.
