Or why you're never going to generate more than pocket change for your best efforts in this economy. In contrast to the other online publishers cited, ZBookstore is a better platform for writers, small though it may be. https://authorsguild.org/news/key-takeaways-from-2023-author-income-survey/
2018, 2022, sounds like they were due to rerun the study this year.
I wonder whether they'll compare incomes between men and women authors, since that's becoming a hotter topic.
AJ
I wonder how they define full-time. Those earnings can't be the only source of income. The term "starving artist" would be literal. And when they convert it to minimum wage, how many hours per day of actual work are they assuming? Are they assuming a 40-hour week of real work, every week for the year?
I don't consider Kindle Unlimited as a promotional vehicle. Those authors' sales are by the page rather than the book. It's a different mechanism to sell their books.
More than one snarky comment mentioned the best way to be a professional writer is to marry someone who makes a good living.
As a professional myself, not a writer, I'm not rated/judged on the number of hours per week, but on the tasks and their quality.
I'm not rated/judged on the number of hours per week, but on the tasks and their quality.
But they specifically converted the annual income to an hourly wage.
But they specifically converted the annual income to an hourly wage.
As a salaried, overtime exempt professional, Officially, I am paid $X/week. Yes, you can convert that to an hourly wage based on assuming Y hours/week, but I get paid the same whether I work 30 hours, 40 hours, or 60 hours.
I don't even get straight time for extra hours.
As a professional myself, not a writer, I'm not rated/judged on the number of hours per week, but on the tasks and their quality.
Many jobs seem to be tied to KPI- Key Performance Indicators.
Unfortunately with the way many of them seem to be setup, what they measure and how they measure it don't seem to align that well with the actual job and the results of the work done.
With my own job there have been times where our KPIs were very poor, yet the work was being done within the time frame it needed to be done and the customers were generally happy.
And times where the KPIs were very good, and things were an absolute shit show and no-one was happy.
In general we just consider KPIs to be a purely management/marketing thing and we just try to get as much done as quickly as possible while it's done right the first time.
Many jobs seem to be tied to KPI- Key Performance Indicators.
We didn't call them KPIs, but as management our bonuses were based on the goals set. This goes back to the days of mainframe computers. As head of the database organization, one year a goal was to reduce disk storage so we compressed the data. The next year we had a performance goal so we took the compression off.
Many jobs seem to be tied to KPI- Key Performance Indicators.
That particularly applies to executives. You can be chief of a failing company or linked to a series of scandals and still get bonuses of 100% of salary for meeting performance targets.
AJ
More than one snarky comment mentioned the best way to be a professional writer is to marry someone who makes a good living.
Another good way is to be famous by other means. Would Earl Spencer have had his recent work of fiction published if nobody had ever heard of him?
AJ
It's been said many times, the most profitable genre of writing has always been ransom notes.
It's been said many times, the most profitable genre of writing has always been ransom notes.
Or tabloid journalism. The level of literacy is the same and it normally involves the same type of person....
It's been said many times, the most profitable genre of writing has always been ransom notes.
Even that doesn't always work: cf O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief"
~ JBB