Tuesday 15 January 2019

My writing earnings!

A bunch of articles and statistics have been floating around recently on the subject of author earnings. Are they going up, going down? What are the mean, mode, and median? What's the variance, the kurtosis? All good questions.

Statistics is a murky area of mathematics though, and still largely a mystery to me despite the fact that my Ph.D was all about one small corner of it.

A mean salary is pretty meaningless when there's no obvious way to draw a circle around the population of interest. Where do "authors" stop being authors. If we include everyone who has ever self-published an ebook then their average annual salary might be a dollar because we would include a vast number of folk who put out one book five years ago which sold ten copies.

If we include only those who make their living as writers then of course the mean will be a reasonably healthy living wage ... by definition ... because we have only included people who make a living at it.

And the same problem exists if we confine ourselves to traditional publishing. When do you stop being an author? Mr X published a book in 2012, it earned well that year. But is he now in our data pool with his sales of 50 copies in 2018?

So, yeah, the data will say what you want it to. And the fact is that it is very difficult to make a living at this game. Better to do it because you love it, keep the day job, and if it ever starts making money ... hooray! You've won the lottery (but probably not the jackpot, just one of those prizes that are still stupidly unlikely but pay far less).

Anyway. This is how my earnings have fluctuated over the years.

There's no absolute scale, because that's just going to enrage someone, either from the "he's rubbing our noses in it" end of the spectrum or the "oh my God, I thought someone who sold that well should be a millionaire" end.


And here is the data on my advances and royalty payments, which you can read more detail on here.

Each year since 2013 my income has been a mix of advance payments guaranteed when I sign contracts, and royalties on books that have "earned out". Before 2013 it was just the advance on my first trilogy being paid out in stages.

(black = advance, colour column = total earnings through royalties (when the colour column exceeds the black column I start getting money on top of my advance))


And that's all I've got!

I have four books out this year, which accounts for much of last year's record total. Next year it will likely be just the one, so things will settle down (boo, hiss!).

And when will I stop being an author? Maybe not until the day I die. But I am sure that my earnings will tail off at sooner or later, at which point I will need to survive on whatever has been squirrelled away in the good years and/or get a day job again.









Wednesday 9 January 2019

The Stabbies - reddit r/fantasy awards 2018

The Stabbies are the voted award handed out each year by r/fantasy in many categories, including Best Book, Best Debut, and Best Self-Published Book. 



Check out the official results and the nominations

Unfortunately I can't bring you the top 5 in each category this year as the Stabbies have become a victim of their success and voting was subject to some manipulation this year. To avoid acrimony the organisers are withholding the rankings.

I recused myself from the contest this year since I won the Golden Stabby last year. Though I did contribute to Petros Triantafyllou's The Art of War which won a Stabby for Best Anthology!



The book results (many more categories on site)


Best Fantasy 2018

Bloody Rose - Nicholas Eames



Best Fantasy Debut 2018

The Poppy War - R.F Kuang



Best Self-published / Independent Fantasy 2018

Ghostwater - Will Wight


Congratulations to all!



See the results of the 2017 Award2016 Award2015 Award2014 Award2013 Award and the 2012 Award.


Reddit r/fantasy has 482,000 members (up from 243,000 last year, 145,000 the year before, 85,000 the year before and 69,000 the year before that) and is the most active fantasy forum on the internet. Well worth checking out - though the interface is a steep learning curve at first.



population growth on the sub reddit over the past 7 years