They say if you choose a career you really enjoy, then it never will seem like work or a job.
Well, when I decided to become a writer I discovered this was true – it’s never seemed like a job or real work to me…mainly because it’s barely earned me any money.
My first job as a writer, a correspondent for a weekly newspaper, earned me 25 cents per column inch. So after my articles were printed, I would whip out my trusty ruler and carefully measure each one. In a good week, I could earn about $15.
I quickly learned not to appreciate people who spoke in abbreviated terms. I wanted everyone I interviewed to ramble on endlessly, spewing out words like a slot-machine spitting out jackpot coins.
There were too many times, however, when I spent more for gas to drive to an interview than I earned for the story itself. Take, for example, the night I was assigned to interview the newly-installed president of a local women’s club.
When I arrived at the specified time and location, the members were just sitting down to dine on a pot-luck supper. I was informed that after they ate, they then would conduct the business portion of the meeting. But in the meantime, they graciously added, I was welcome to join them for supper, which I appreciated.
Nearly an hour later, after the members had finished eating and were exchanging recipes for the casseroles, salads and desserts each had brought to the pot-luck, I figured I’d finally be able to interview the new president…only to discover the official installation hadn’t even taken place yet…and was about to begin.
So I had to wait until the new president actually was sworn in as the new president.
By the time I sat through the lengthy installation of officers and a variety of speeches, it was close to 9 PM, yet the outgoing president still was onstage, thanking everyone from her ancient ancestors to her current mail carrier.
But instead of being discouraged because I was getting paid only by the inch and not by the hour, I was encouraged. These women were talkers, and talkers meant a lot of words…which translated into a lot of inches.
When I finally was able to interview the new president, however, the conversation went something like this:
ME: “So, as the new president, what are your plans for the club in the upcoming year?”
HER: “Oh, I have quite a few major changes in mind, but I’m not prepared to discuss them yet.”
ME: “Are you pleased to be the new president or are you feeling a bit apprehensive right now?”
HER: “I’m pleased.”
ME: “What is a main goal you would like to achieve during your term?”
HER: “To do my very best.”
The interview went progressively downhill after that. Whenever I give my dogs the command to “speak,” even they say more than that woman did.
I ended up earning a whopping $1.75 for the article. But on the bright side, I did enjoy and get the recipes for Grace Benson’s lasagna and Edna Turner’s apple cobbler.
When I later became a columnist, I was paid $25 per column, which sounded like a fortune after earning only 25 cents per inch. And I wrote eight columns per month, so that was a hefty $200.
And after only 20 more years of writing those columns week after week, I finally received a raise and earned $35 for each one.
I did manage to write some decent-paying articles for publications like New Hampshire Magazine and Chicken Soup for the Soul, but they weren’t regular enough to make me financially self-sufficient. In fact, if I’d had to support myself solely on what I made from all of those years of writing, I’d probably be living in my car right now.
No, on second thought, I wouldn’t even have been able to afford a car.
I think it’s because, for some reason, writing isn’t considered an actual career by many people. I can’t count the number of times newspapers and other publications asked me to write for them, and when I enthusiastically responded with, “Thank you! I would love to! How much do you pay?” the response usually was, “Pay? We don’t pay.”
“Um, then what exactly is in it for me?” I’d ask.
“Exposure,” too often came the typical response.
Let me point out here that after writing for most of my life, I’ve already had more “exposure” than a convention of Playboy bunnies. What I need is money…cash, moolah, dinero, checks, even gift cards…anything that will prevent me from having to resort to reading my poetry on street corners.
Alas, in 2009, I decided to try my hand at writing books. Surely, I thought, a novel would earn a lot more money than a column. All I had to do was sit down and create about 100,000 brilliant words, find a publisher and then sit back and wait for the cash to come rolling in, especially after the book made it into the top 10 on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Sure…simple.
It took me over two years of writing, rewriting and constant overthinking before I finally finished my first book. And then I spent another year receiving rejection letters from agents who were hoping to represent someone like Oprah Winfrey or Meryl Streep, not some unknown writer from small-town New Hampshire. I guess I really couldn’t blame them. Heck, why settle for crumbs when they could have caviar?
Frustrated, I decided to self-publish. I figured I had nothing to lose, other than my sanity. Amazon was offering free publishing, along with royalties based on a percentage of the profits from the number of books sold. That sounded good to me.
So I researched self-publishing and even joined a few writing groups online that dealt specifically with the subject.
As I read their advice, however, I rolled my eyes so much, I was afraid my eyeballs were going to fall out and land on my keyboard.
“An attention-grabbing book cover is essential,” the published writers said. “You have to make sure it attracts readers. So plan to spend at least $2,000 to $3,000 on a professionally designed one. It will be worth every penny in the long run.”
“And you definitely need an experienced editor to correct all of your errors, like plot holes and inconsistencies,” they added. “So set aside a minimum of $3,000 or more for editing.”
“Also, don’t forget to hire the best narrators for the audio version of your book,” another advised. “I sell more audio books than both the paperbacks and e-books combined. However, if you have a narrator with an annoying or robot-like voice, that can be a death sentence for your novel.”
“But the biggest part of your budget should be spent on promoting your book,” the majority of them emphasized. “You are competing with millions of other writers, so how do you expect to be noticed? You have to aggressively advertise and promote your work or no one will even know it exists.”
Their advice made good sense, I thought.
But as someone who hadn’t even earned enough to classify it as poverty-level income from my writing over the years, my "budget" had a grand total of only about $50 to spend on my book.
So I decided to try to create my own book cover, even though I had no idea how to go about it. I drove around with my camera and snapped scenic photos. I sketched pictures or painted them. I downloaded free fonts for fancy lettering. I even found several photographers who said I could use their work, royalty free, for merely an acknowledgement in my book’s credits.
And then I actually did design all of my own book covers – except for the very first one, There’s a Tick in my Underwear! I splurged $35 for a cover creator from Smashwords to design that one because I wasn't satisfied with the cover I created. I mean, hanging a pair of granny panties on a tree limb and snapping a photo of them flapping in the breeze might have seemed like a great idea for a cover at the time, but the end result proved to me it definitely wasn't. So once I paid for the professional cover (well, maybe semi-professional), I was able to use it as a guideline afterwards for creating the rest of my covers. I also did my own editing on my manuscripts and then would ask a couple of my friends to read them and be brutally honest…which they were.
As I wrote more and more books, I learned that the best way to be “found” was to offer a few of the books at no cost…and then hope the readers would be impressed enough to actually pay to read more of them.
I also learned that when you offer a book free of charge, readers really don’t care much about what the cover looks like. Free is free, after all. The same with sequels. If the readers enjoy the first book and develop an attachment to the characters, then they’ll want to read the sequel, even if the cover looks as if someone drew it an hour after undergoing cataract surgery.
Since 2012, I’ve written and self-published a total of 12 books, two of which have been in the top 20 in their respective categories for all 13 years. My books have been purchased and/or downloaded (including the free ones) over 250,000 times.
Sounds pretty impressive, right?
 |
| A GIFT FROM ONE OF MY FRIENDS |
Wrong. Depending on the price of the book, Amazon pays me a royalty of anywhere from a mere three cents to a “huge” $1.75. So the way I figure it, I would have to sell about three million books a year just to earn the minimum wage.
And forget about creating audio versions of my books. I tried the free virtual-voice audiobook conversion Amazon offers and the voice not only sounded robotic, for some reason it also decided to read all of the punctuation out loud along with the dialogue, so it sounded like this:
“Open quotes, Oh, darling, exclamation point! Of course, comma, I will move to Boston with you! Exclamation point, closed quotes.”
Not exactly oozing with romance.
I did price professional narrators for audio books, but quickly nixed that idea. The only one I could even come close to affording was an 86-year-old retired disc-jockey with an equally ancient reel-to-reel tape recorder. When I told him my book's narrator was a young female, he said he could talk in a high-pitched voice if I'd like.
But I’ll never stop writing, at least not by choice. It’s in my blood and always will remain my chosen career, even if it forces me to eat rice and assorted chicken parts six days a week. And I’ll never give up hoping that some big film-producer might read one of my free books someday and offer me a six-figure contract for the movie rights to it.
Don’t laugh! Exclamation point. An old woman still can dream, can’t she? Question mark.
In the meantime, I’m seriously considering changing my pen name to Oprah Winfrey…or maybe even Taylor Swift.
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
No comments:
Post a Comment