So You Want to be a Published Author...

Why? What is your motivation? Do you want to be the next Dan Brown or (insert author's name here)? Do you want to make tons of money because the writing is the easy life?

The reality of most published author (me included)...

You can spend months or years finding a reputable agent for your masterpiece, the Great American Novel. You finally get an agent. Yippeee! Yahooo! But that's only the first step. Now your agent has to sell your book to a publisher, this can happen within a few days, like it has for some friends of mine, or it can take two years, like it's happened to another friend of mine. Here's the low down on publishing...

Unless you have a track record in published works, advanced royalties are going to be small...in the neighborhood of $0-$5,000. When you balance it against the time it took you to write the "Great American Novel," you've probably made pennies an hour. On average it takes six months to a year to complete a novel, and another twelve to eighteen months before it hits the bookshelves in your local Books-a-Million.

On one end you read in the paper that such-and-such author had a one million dollar royalty paid for writing their novel. Not bad you think, but read the small print. That contract many have been for several books in a series.

An author friend of mine got such a contract from a publisher. Great! Terrific! Sounds good, right? Now consider. It took her six years to write the three books in the contract. Most advances are paid out in portions; X amount at signing the contract, X amount on completion of an ACCEPTABLE manuscript, you can go through months of rewrites to reach this point, and X amount when it hits the shelves. Now, if you have a three book contract...you do the math.

Most published writers do not make enough money to support themselves unless they publish several times a year and keep going on that cycle. You say, but you can earn royalties on the books as they sell. Yes, that's true, maybe. On average, trade paperbacks have a shelf life of three months, nonfiction up to two years...both is determined by sales. You essentially have to pay back the advance you received in the beginning before you see a check on royalties. First run printings will not cover your advance. So your book will have to sell really, really well and go into multiple printings to see royalty checks. Royalties are paid every six months.

Most publishers want first look at your next one or two books to decide whether or not they will publish it. Depending on the sales of your current book, they may not want to publish you again. In that case, your agent will be shopping for another publisher for subsequent works. This is a double edged sword because the new publisher will look at the stats for the previous book also before he decides to buy your book.

Complicated, isn't it. Was it what you thought it would be? Probably not. Is it rewarding? Is it what you want to do? You have to write for the love of story-telling and writing. That's not to say you won't be the next J.K. Rowlings, Diana Gabaldon, or Dan Brown. You could be. Write on!