Unfortunate Facts: Without Sponsorship, Most Artists Can't Eat

One of the most frustrating things about being a professional author is trying to explain to people just how difficult it is to wring blood from the stone when it comes to actually making enough money to pay bills at the end of the month. Because there's a big difference between knowing that most artists, "aren't making it," and really looking at the numbers.

Because, as Kameron Hurley says, traditional books only sell about 3,000 copies over their entire lifetime. 250-300 copies in their first year. Indie books do even worse, with a lifetime average of about 250 total sales. And if you're self-published? Well, according to The Guardian chances are good you make less than $500 a year from your work.

Oh don't worry... shit gets worse from here.

For all the folks out there who are thinking that it seems impossible to make a living just from book sales unless you're one of those lucky outliers who make the news (those 100k-1 million sales in the debut month folks you see on the front page), that's because it is. Even generous contracts only allow you to make a couple bucks off of a book sale, and if you're selling a few hundred books a year, that's a nice little bonus check, but it isn't going to keep the wolf from the door. Especially if you only get one check every 6 months or so, like a lot of authors do.

So How Do Authors Pay Their Bills?

The short answer is that authors have to do something beyond just waiting for people to buy their books. Unfortunately chances are good that every single thing you just thought of has factors stopping it from actually working out in an author's favor without a lot of luck. Most of the things I've seen folks suggest when I talk about making ends meet include:

- Handselling books at conventions

- Starting a YouTube channel/podcast

- Running a blog/creating Internet articles

- Releasing free fiction to hook readers into buying into your catalog

In theory, all of these are sound ideas. The problem is that most of the time they either do very little to help, or they can actively hurt you.

Again, the numbers don't lie.

Let's start with handselling books at conventions, signings, and similar events. Can you do that? Absolutely! Can you make a profit? Potentially. The issue arises when you take into consideration the costs associated with this activity, and how many copies you need to sell just to break even. Because first, you need to buy the stock to have it on-hand (which can be anywhere from $50 for a small number of books to $100 or more if you're stocking up). Then once you have your stock you need to pay a table fee (usually another $100 or more), get yourself to the event (gas, tolls, time taken off work, etc.), and often buy a badge if one isn't included in your merchant fee. Then if the event is too far from home, you need to get a hotel room for the stay (and even smaller events can quickly rack up $200-$400 for a weekend).

Can you cut some of these costs? Absolutely. You can share table space with other authors, get friends to split hotel room costs with (or focus more on local events), volunteer for panels to get your badge compensated... but at the end of the event, you're going to have to sell enough books to cover your costs. And if you're making, say, $5 a sale then at minimum you'll have to move 20-30 copies before you break even for a small event with cut corners. If you didn't cut costs? You might need to sell 50+ copies at even a small event before you make any profit at all.

For bigger events? You might end up paying hundreds of dollars just to be there and be seen when all is said and done. Not unlike how after paying lighting specialists, travel costs, etc., smaller bands often owe money to their record label for tours instead of walking away with money in their pockets.

And for the other options? Well, technology has changed the way that works. In the old days you could easily make money with ads on your site if you had a steady audience, but these days everyone has Ad Block on. And if you're on a site like YouTube it can take months to literal years of work before the site decides you're worthy enough to be monetized. Podcasts often pay a fraction of a cent on a listen, requiring thousands of listens a month to make any money whatsoever. And while planting a hook with free fiction is a good idea, it takes time, effort, and energy to write that, and there's zero guarantee it's going to even be seen, much less entice a purchase from a reader.

So how do we do it? Well, with help from our sponsors mostly.

For Less Than $1 a Day, You Can Help Feed a Starving Artist

While the changes that hit the music industry in the digital age isn't a 1 to 1 comparison of the changes in publishing, there are a lot of similarities. The biggest one is that a lot of us need some form of sponsorship, or even an affiliate sales deal, just to make our ends meet.

Sometimes that means we get paid to produce a particular type or style of content. For instance, I recently received my first sponsorship from SHM Publishing who made sure my Pathfinder character conversion guide for the Catachan Jungle Fighters got written. I have both an Amazon and Drive Thru RPG affiliate link that, if I wasn't slapping it onto basically every product I mention in a blog or article (my own products and others), there's no way I'd be able to buy groceries. And while I haven't been given an appearance fee for an event yet (real talk, most people don't know who the hell I am), I have rubbed shoulders with bigger names who get fat checks from events to show up as a guest of honor.

But the biggest sponsors most authors can have? It's readers like you.

That sounds like a line dropped from a PBS script for being too sappy, but it's true. Without folks supporting me on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, or leaving occasional tips in my Ko-Fi cup, I would never be able to keep doing what I'm doing. And even with a small but dedicated following, it's a slog making it through the months a lot of the time.

So for folks who want to help make sure that I keep making content, whatever form it takes, there's some things you can do to help.

- Become a sponsor by signing up on my Patreon page, or leaving a Ko-Fi donation.

- Buy my books! My feline noir mystery novels Marked Territory and Painted Cats are over on my Amazon author page along with a slew of other stuff I've written over the years.

- Leave a review of any book you've read to boost the signal.

- Read some articles in my Vocal archive. If you find something you like, blast it on your social media pages so more people see it. They're free to you, and I get paid based on traffic!

Trust me, I wish that I could just sit back and crank out book after book for folks' reading pleasure. Sadly, the fickle finger of the zeitgeist hasn't landed on me, and thus I have to make sure I keep that hustle going. Any and all help in making sure the sweat is worth something is greatly appreciated.

And if you'd like to sponsor a creator like me, feel free to reach out! I didn't pick the name The Literary Mercenary for nothing, and I'm always interested in a business proposal.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!