It’s pretty much a given that when someone finds out I’m a published author, they assume I’m rich. Like JK Rowling. Because, apparently, all authors live in mansions and fly around in private jets and have staff to cater to their worldly needs while they focus on communing with the creative Muse so they can write more books, right?
Wrong.
Oh, so very, very wrong.
Most authors, even those who are traditionally published, do not make enough as a writer to pay their rent or feed their kids. Most of us have day jobs or we wouldn’t be able to survive. We write in the little pockets of time we can carve out around our jobs and our other responsibilities. And we certainly do not have mansions and staff and private jets. In traditional publishing, book advances have been trending down for decades and my understanding is that, for most new writers, advances tend to be in the 5-figure range — that’s thousands, not tens of thousands (and certainly not millions). And that money isn’t paid to the author in a lump sum, they get it in 3 to 5 chunks, spread out over 2+ years, usually. And authors don’t see any royalty payments until any book advance has “paid out” (meaning they’ve earned enough in royalty payments to equal the advance they got). And then royalty payments themselves are usually literally pennies per copy sold after that.
So, it’s rare for an author to be able to quit a day job to be able to write full time. And it’s even rarer for one to be making millions from their book sales.
Factoring in Indies
And when you factor indie authorship into things, it’s a whole new set of financial strain. We indies have to pay for everything out of pocket. Book covers, editing, professional editorial reviews, and kind of marketing or advertising — all of it costs money, and all of it gets paid out of pocket by us. And, in addition to the time it takes to write a book, we also have to put in all the time for marketing and outreach on our own.
There was a really good thread over on Bluesky recently that touched on all of this.
Most authors make less than $12,000 a year from their books Many, many – especially indies – barely surpass $1,000 a year, and some don't hit that And we pour dozens, hundreds, thousands of hours into our books 2/?
— Dianna Gunn Does (Fictional) Murders 🇨🇦 (@diannalgunn.bsky.social) May 18, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Full disclosure: I’m nowhere near making even $1000 a year on book sales. Nowhere near. Hitting that mark is in the realm of dreams for me, and is one of the reasons it’s so hard to be an indie author. I pay more than that out of pocket each time I send a single book out into the world. (So if you’re on social media anywhere, please share my book posts and help a girl sell a few books? 😅)
Indies Pay for Everything Themselves
Marketing and advertising is something I really struggle with. Getting the word out to let people know that my books exist at all has been the hardest and most discouraging part of being an author for me.
I lost track of how many hours I spent trying to reach out to book bloggers on various channels who I thought might be interested in reviewing my first book. I couldn’t find many who did middle grade. Most who did never responded. Several who did and wanted a review copy never got around to doing any kind of review.
I spent so much money with that first book sending out paperback review copies (which I have to buy and ship myself) only to never hear back from many of the reviewers who had requested them. (If you’re one of the ones who did do a review, thank you so much! You rock!) This is why I no longer do paperback review copies. It was just too cost prohibitive for little return.
We indies are also at the mercy of the companies that control whether or not our books are even seen by people who would probably love them. With River of Crows, you couldn’t even find it with a title search on Amazon for the first 6 months. Plus, royalty percents keep getting cut.
AI-Everything is Slamming Authors
We’re also getting slammed by the AI-everything trend that’s allowing techbros to literally steal our books and use them to train algorithms that will slice-and-dice those books and then slap those pieces together with pieces from other people’s books to allow anyone to rapidly churn out abominable Frankenstein monsters with no thought or soul or artistic integrity that will then get vomited up onto sales platforms, making it even harder for our books to get any kind of traction as they get lost in the onslaught. Other people are now illegally profiting off our work, usually while we haven’t even broken even on what we’ve spent bringing our books into the world in the first place.
In short, it’s disheartening to be an author these days.
But still we persist. Because we have stories to tell. And we want so much to be able to share them with you, even though it’s hard. We write, and we publish, and we hope that one day we’ll feel like “real authors”, and see some amount of success (whatever that looks like to each of us) even though it feels, lately, like an exhausting, demoralizing, Sisyphean task that we can never hope achieve.
Spread the Word About Books You Love
But you can help by spreading the word to everyone you know about books that you love:
- Mention them in conversation.
- Post about them on your social media accounts.
- Leave quick reviews wherever you buy books.
It doesn’t have to be long or fancy in any way. But helping get the word out about an author’s books can go a long way to giving that author the encouragement they need to keep going in a world that is increasingly hostile to us. Your willingness to champion books you love can help authors keep writing, despite everything that is stacked against us. And that matters. Because stories matter. Especially when the world is in turmoil.
Being an author, especially an indie author in the kidlit sector where, for obvious reasons, you’re not marketing to the people who actually read your book, is really tough. There are few wins, and they’re far apart. Little things like unexpected book sales or lovely reviews or positive mentions on social media mean everything to us.
