It’s no secret that even the greatest inspirations of our career such as Poe or Hemingway or Twain did not have wealthy, successful livelihoods. The J.K. Rowlings, James Pattersons, or Dan Browns of the world are more exceptions to the rule than the rule itself. The rule being: writing is not a lucrative business.

While most writers don’t do it for the cash bag, I can imagine most if not all of us have had that conversation with a family member, friend, partner, or colleague where after the question of our occupation comes the question of whether or not we have enough food at home. It’s comedically underhanded coupled with patronizing sympathy we didn’t ask for, and yet I can’t say I blame this response. I’d be concerned too. It begs the question though: why do writers get this rep? The U.S. Bureau of Labor counts writers and authors at 143,200 of the workforce with a median salary of $67,000. That doesn’t sound like the poverty line to me.

However, the median is more of an average. Is this what the average author should expect to make?

The 1% of writers

Wealth distribution is a term thrown around in politics, economics, and occasionally family discussion. The evil corporate wealthy 1%ers of the country reap benefits from the working class or something, something (I’ve been watching a lot of Mr. Robot lately). Well, there’s no question there is wealth disparity, and it’s become a growing issue. However, does this distribution apply within the writing sector too?

After all, James Patterson makes $90 million a year and a $800 million net worth. John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer, and Stephen King are a combined $900 million. J.K. Rowling is marked at $1 billion. Sure, that’s a bit staggering, a lot more than a measly $67,000, but that’s still a desirable wage. How realistic is it for authors to meet that amount?

Well, contrary to popular belief, it’s doable with the right combination of perseverance, hard work, and luck. In fact, if you or an agent can land a deal with one of the Big 5 (HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster) who together are worth nearly $9 billion in revenue, a six figure pre-empt isn’t out of the question. In fact, according to PublishersWeekly, Tundra Books offered a mid-six-figure deal to Philadelphia visual artist X. Fang for a picture book, and Riverhead offered six-figures with Georgian novelist Leo Vardiashvili. It can be done. It isn’t out of the question. The myth of the ‘struggling writer’ can be busted. So what is standing in the way between authors and success? What is weighing the book industry down?

There are so many books

Writing is an older medium than music and by far older than picture and film, yet consuming either is staggeringly quicker than consuming a book. With a rapidly growing number of books in the world and a rapidly shrinking number of free time on our hands, and only the same number of hours in the day, readers have to be very selective with what they want to read so they don’t waste their time. And not everyone can be a bookworm who consumes a novel a week like some do, it’s simply asking too much. Not to mention the transition from hard back to digital ‘eBooks’ over the past 20 years, but that’s a whole other subject in it of itself.

That kind of competition leaves strikingly little margin of error for new names to scratch the surface of the industry. New writers need every possible edge they can muster to break the mold. 

While there are bookworms, book reviewers, English teachers, fast readers, and ‘BookTubers’ out there who more than make up for the people who don’t read any books, they are too few and far between to a majority populace that has relinquished reading from being an established hobby.

With too much supply and not enough demand, there is an increasing hesitancy on the market.

The hypocrisy of banned literature

Not only that, but the entire publishing industry has no doubt, at times, fallen on its side. Questionable decisions to ban books – Fahrenheit 451, Huckleberry Finn, 1984, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord Of The Flies; I could name 20 other classics and still not cover it – have tainted the industry in near-irreversible ways. The whole ‘freedom of speech’ mantra which so many democratic nations stake their independence on becomes undermined when literature that challenges society cannot be read. 

For there to still be banned books, in this day and age, has caused a reader AND writer hesitancy when it comes to buying or making books, and that alone has crippled the industry. How genuine, how honest, how trustworthy can publishing houses be when books are banned for simply telling it how it is?

The publishing industry benefits the publisher, not the author

The publishing industry is simply backwards. If you publish a novel traditionally, through an agent as a medium and an acquisitions editor as the people standing between you and glory, you’re typically left without the money flowing directly to you for a while. You’re left with an advance given by the publisher (most of the time) and a cut of that going to the agent. Once that advance is paid off, you only see a percentage (and often a small %) of the royalties from book sales afterward. Money trickles down to the author, often leaving them dry once sales start to wane. Marketing and promotion (what you’re supposed to be relying on your agent and publisher to be doing) often falls upon the author’s shoulders too, and marketing is seldom free. If an author has to spend money just to make money for his or her service, the system isn’t serving the author, but the publisher.

And obviously, that is the entire problem with self-publishing as well. While you eliminate the need for a middleman in your literary agent, you end up paying for the expenses of cover artists, editors, and marketers anyway, and suddenly you are paying for three middlemen. Self-publishing gives you total autonomy on the design and production of your book, but rarely does it give you the opportunity to rise above your competitors. It’s ultimately a catch-22.

‘The writer stigma’

This point seems silly as an adult, but I remember as a child feeling embarrassed for writing stories. It fell into the column of ‘nerdy’ jobs like analytics and tech that no one with an iota of ‘coolness’ would even touch. Obviously when you’re older you realize that none of that truly matters, but when you’re young it matters a lot, because when you’re young, you aren’t trying to make an impression on the world, just on those around you. And if writing can’t appeal to the young, the future of books is doomed.

Now this may not be the case for some of you. Some of you may have found a real, solid, concrete sense of pride and enthusiasm winning Spelling Bees or striking all A’s on your AP English Composition courses or earning stars for critical reading skills or editor-in-chief of the school paper and literary magazine. I’m proud of kids like that. However, that was not me. 

When asked if I ever wanted to do it as a career, I would deflect and say it was just a hobby, even when a part of me really did desire to publish my work. From as early as middle school, there is already a stigma surrounding those who profess writing as their profession. It’s hardly as appealing of an answer when told to those adults who constantly pester us about what we want to be when we’re older.

Typically, you shuffle through different rounds of career hunting. Elementary school, you dream big. Astronaut, firefighter, movie star, rock star, lawyer, doctor, or President all come to mind. Middle school, you gain a sense of practicality. Middle school recess and testing are real good at weeding out your limits. In recess and gym, you learn your physical limits, and higher learning testing you learn your mental limits.

So your career path narrows. Maybe teachers, detectives, athletes, nurses, so on come to mind. In high school, you become a lot more pragmatic about it. Unless you’re already fairly talented and stuff just comes to you, you’re at a crossroads with how you want your career path to go. College and trade school become more prevalent. Scholarships, internships, or family businesses take center stage. 

I found writing to be quite low on each of these lists in each of these stages for me, despite it being such a hobby of mine early on. Obviously, everyone’s journey is different and there are several more factors that can go into it, but childhood is something we all share, and so is the shared question: who do I want to be? Who can I become?

Younger me had dozens of story ideas and novel prompts littered on my small, archaic Dell computer coming home from school. All were stories I was too shy to show others and unwilling to admit I ever saw this hobby of mine extending any further than a hobby. I saw it as far too nerdy and unexciting, and for a long time I felt discouraged to be a writer, finding other mediums such as music, film, and photography as a far better career alternative.

Yet here I am, a published author, a former newspaper Editor-in-Chief, an aspiring literary agent, and a blogger with insights on the publishing world.

Professions without pride?

Journalists are given a horrible rap for the sins of the greater media industry, often seen as the nosey, dishonest, ungenuine, and desperate story scooper with an agenda. Even journalists who label themselves as investigative or independent journalists are seen as unreliable sources of information when they aren’t backed by major media conglomerates. 

Bloggers are viewed as the ugly stepsister of journalism with hardly the same level of integrity and ethos as seasoned, credible journalists (I suppose I am falling into that category).

Poetry struggles with being taken seriously, often lumped together with strange and hard-to-understand lyricism that to those unversed with verses seems impossible to get into. 

Novel writing often seems too daunting of a task when one is unsure where to truly begin, and the number of rejections from publishers is often staggering and too hard to overcome.

Screenwriters face even more rejection, with some producers not even giving the time of day to read the second page of some scripts if they notice the slightest infraction.

Freelance writers are stigmatized as far too unreliable, often scrapping for clients and income-wise only capable of the bare minimum, even if there are proven successful freelancers who’ve gone on to start their own businesses (I suppose I am falling into this category too).

For all these reasons, I’ve noticed personally a hesitancy toward writing occupations. A profession without pride.

I once saw writers as these people who stayed in office cubicles all day sweating their bottoms off in their leather seats while getting terrible pay. I was completely ignorant to the side of writing that involves traveling the world, meeting extraordinary people, and inspiring so many people you’ve never met through words alone. There aren’t enough examples of those who truly live life and experience it in their own aesthetic. Today’s authors and publishers are busting the myth that writing is a starving profession.