As a number of authors are doing right now, I've written up a post of my #writing income and expenses for 2017. It includes rough costs, observations on new projects, and general where I am in this lovely path in life.
https://d.moonfire.us/blog/2018/01/12/writing-monies/
https://octodon.social/media/dwf9_Hc-kudHRdXYkJ4 https://octodon.social/media/DWLDe0fQChEToXvo3qI https://octodon.social/media/gzC9NNIxFVO-fWjsEtA
@dmoonfire Interesting. Hope you don‘t mind a pretty newbie fiction author asking: Why this trend of publishing the numbers? I would have guessed most people know #writing and #publishing fiction is not the easy way to getting bills paid, so why inform? Thanks a lot for enlightening me!
@Troim So, I write the posts because I had that same struggle, I felt like a failure because no one I know was talking about struggling for $100.
I include costs to self-publish because I try to do it "right" and get it edited, and few people talk about the costs of editing or printing either. :)
"We are all in this together."
@Troim I think the biggest one is trying to help other writers answer the question "is this normal?" Without having data points, it's hard to have a reasonable expectation.
We hear about the 1%ers like @scalzi with his $3.4m deal, Jim C. Hines' $40k/year range, but less about the 99% who aren't writing rock stars.
When you only have the 1%ers to look to, everything feels like a failure. Knowing there are others who struggle to make $100/year on three books helps with that.