What Is Life As An Author Like?

[FionordeQuester]

How difficult is it? You get to spend most of your time at home right? Is it extremely difficult? You get payed enough to support yourself right?

[Crystal Shards]

Um, it depends. First you have to get picked up by a publishing company; before then you're making no money whatsoever. If you're working for a company, like a magazine or something, it really depends on the company on if you can work at home or not. Most of them have an office job though. I assume you mean a book author however, in which case it just depends on how much you sell.

Oh I forgot to add: most authors, unless they're at the (sales) level of J.K. Rowling and the like, have another job other than author.

Edited November 28, 2008 by Crystal Shards

[Celice]

And that depends, also, on the authoring you wish to do. If you're in it for the money, or, in it for the knowledge. Equally, depending on your route, you may have different means of circulating funds--for example, universities aren't so bad a place to refine both your word and your pocket at the same time.

[FionordeQuester]

Alright, suppose I was a pure book writer. How hard is it to be good enough to not need another job?

[Crystal Shards]

Again, unless you make money like the kind J.K. Rowling or Stephen King does, um, it's very difficult.

[FionordeQuester]

Uh huh...and what did they do to get so much money, was it the quality of their books, or how many books they wrote? Are you basically set after you achieve their level of success?

Edited November 28, 2008 by FionordeQuester

[Crystal Shards]

I don't know, I haven't made it big time. It depends on your spending habits, to be honest. Their books were just read by the right people I guess. I mean JKR and Stephen King aren't excellent writers by any means, but they wrote well enough that the masses enjoyed their books. They sold books, or rather their publishers did.

[FionordeQuester]

I see, thanks for your time dude!

Edited November 28, 2008 by FionordeQuester

[Destiny Hero]

I would guess that you could just find the right publisher, know where to advertise (forums would work great), have lots of close friends to help advertise, and just write a really good book and you should be fine, and then save all of your money, and then write a sequel that everyone knows won't be as good as the original.

[Starwolf_UK]

If you're working for a company, like a magazine or something,

As far as the freelance route goes for magazines they are awful at paying. You will get paid eventually but usually this is months after you did the work and it appeared in print.

What this means you can't use freelancing for magazines as a reliable source of income. Additionally, you'll have to put up with the editor being able to change the article in any way they please (and if you provide pictures, those too might be changed).

[Leonri]

Don't quit you're job just yet. Until you have at least 3-4 sucessful books, you won't have enough to live on. And even then you need a steady stream of work being published. Also you need to have quality books that appeal to alarge audience. There are thousands of unpublished authors out there, you need to be better than all of them to get published.

[FionordeQuester]

Oh no, don't worry. I haven't even begun my second year in college yet, this is just knowledge for the future.

[Crystal Shards]

As far as the freelance route goes for magazines they are awful at paying. You will get paid eventually but usually this is months after you did the work and it appeared in print.

What this means you can't use freelancing for magazines as a reliable source of income. Additionally, you'll have to put up with the editor being able to change the article in any way they please (and if you provide pictures, those too might be changed).

That's assuming you're freelance and not actually working for the company though.

[bunny: spider bitten]

To be fair, Stephen King writes books like they're nothing.

Also, considering most authors actually put money into the books they're making, a second job is required until a book sells.

After you're a success and waste the money you made, people will want more of the same but different. If you do that wrong you're a dead turkey and no matter how good your first book was it'll get new critics.

[Crystal Shards]

After you're a success and waste the money you made, people will want more of the same but different. If you do that wrong you're a dead turkey and no matter how good your first book was it'll get new critics.

Totally depends on the audience you're catering to. I would say most people want at least the same quality of work, but after a while many readers get bored of authors with SSDB (Same Shit Different Book) Syndrome. The critics you gain aren't necessarily there because of your writing ability but because a book has gained more readers, and with more readers comes more critics.

[Celice]

To be fair, Stephen King writes books like they're nothing.

Dean Koontz, or whatever the name, says hi :x Edited November 29, 2008 by Celice