Getting Your First Book Published

Turns out, I'm getting quite a lot of traffic on substack from folks here going there using the link to these articles.  Thank you for that; I assume you're interested in writing advice.

I've been thinking much about the subject and about the effort to remain positive, to not tear down, not to criticise and only to give purposeful advice that improves one's ability to write.  Not like the stuff I write here.  So this post would not belong over there (though I'm not really going to be critical).

What I'd like to do is offer a realistic breakdown of the writing industry at this time, without discussing publishers, writers or writing.  Just plain facts.

Suppose you're a first-time author and your book succeeds in getting on the Times Best Seller list.  As it happens, most debut authors get an advance between $5,000 and $50,000 before the book is finished.  If you get the latter, you're lucky.  As it happens, an author only earns royalties after the advance is "earned out," which means that the sales of the book have covered that upfront payment.  And yes, its entirely possible, in now and present times, to get on the NYTBSL and NOT have your book succeed in earning you $50,000.  But if you get that advance and you don't earn it out, you get to keep the rest.  You don't have to give it back.  Unless you sign a contract.

If your book is hardcover, you'll typically earn 10% on the list price of the book.  That's $2.50 every time a $25 book sells.  If it's a soft cover, the percentage is usually 7.5 to 8.  For ebooks, authors typically get 25% of the publisher's net receipts, but the ebook price is itself cut from the book price.

I've heard long-time authors refer to new authors as getting their "$7,000", which is in the range of what's typical — which is why they don't give first time authors $50,000 up front, unless you're famous for some other reason already.  But let's be generous.  Let's assume your book sells so well that it earns almost four times that: a nice, round, $25,000.  Well done you.

Here's a question: how many 8-hour days at McDonalds would you have to work to make $25,000?  Well, as many cities and places in America are starting to pay $15 an hour for that sort of job (and it's minimum wage in Canada, but obviously not with the USD buying power), let's use that as our baseline.  Number of days?  208.  That's about five full-time work months, assuming 5 days a week.

At this point, we need to ask ourselves, what's the typical length of a book on that makes the list?  Based on observable trends, industry standards, what publishers expect... on the whole, the range is typically between 85,000 and 150,000 words.  In general, if you're writing on a social issue, or with regards to a cultural subject, its easier to come in on the short side of that.  If you want to get into fantasy and sci-fy, expect to be on the far side of that.  But let's go easy.  Let's split it down the middle and call your book 120,000 words.

To equal your McDonald's paycheque, how fast do you have to write?

We can divide this into three phases.  Phase 1: get your first draft finished.  This is easy, like falling off a log.  You have 125 long, wonderful days to do this, so it shouldn't be a problem.  You only need to write 960 words a day.  That’s assuming a smooth, clean pipeline from brain to page. It assumes your plot works, your characters behave, your world makes sense, and the dialogue doesn’t sound like a school play. It assumes you aren’t stopping to sketch a battle map or rework a broken subplot.  You can't lose any weeks worldbuilding rabbit holes, you can't hit any dead ends and have to go back and fix, you can't have extra time to research or make a youtube video about your progress.

On the other hand, McDonald's expects you to be in on Monday, while the book can get shelved for three years and no one carps.

Phase 2: Rewrite your book; you've got 52 days.  You haven't time to fully rewrite the novel, not if you want to get it done in time to earn the same money you'd get at McDonalds.  So, at best, you'll revise about half the book, 60,000 words, trusting the rest.  Rewriting is more intense than writing so you'll need to step it up to 1,155 words per day.  About. 

Phase 3: Edit & Polish.  This is the easiest of all, right?  The book's written, you just have to trim, tighten, fix awkward phrasing... and be very careful not to have a crisis of conscience that your book is actually shit and you ought to write it over again.  After all, there's no pressure — it's not like the people who buy your book or write criticisms of your work, or post things on youtube or social media are going to denounce you, right?  I mean, the world will understand.  I'm sure it will.

How many words a day?  5,000.  For about 29-31 days.

There, you're done.  Congratulations, you've just earned minimum wage.

Assuming your book does sell $25K and not $7K.  In which case, maybe that big win you imagine where getting published is concerned is going to be something of a let-down, huh?

Here's my perspective.  I have been working "writing" jobs since 2004, by which I mean career work for journalism, media and business, 30 to 40 hours a week, and not a minimum wage.  I got those jobs because I could write.  Not in the overblown, dramatic, drum-banging way that fantasy fiction seems to demand nowadays, but through the use of direct, plain english.  In this regard, much of the time, I haven't been successful at this.  I've been unemployed a lot of the time and forced to work jobs that weren't writing oriented, and because of my nature, I've tended to over-stress my interests in D&D and other subjects over soul-crushing day jobs.

But in 20 years, I've earned 14 times the $25K calculation above in wages, by writing.  My self-published book, How to Run, made me personally that much, and Lulu and Amazon an equivalent amount.  Without stress added on by those who would exploit me.

Therefore, it's my personal opinion that the goal is not to learn how to write like those on the best seller lists, but rather, how to write.  Writing is an excellent way to earn money.  Employers really like people who can write.  They want to hire them, and they want to like them.  Forget the glamour.  Just get the skill.