The road to writing riches

A few years ago when I was teaching a freelance writing class at a local community college, a man came up to me during break. With a little grin on his face and speaking softly as if he were looking for insider information, he asked, "So, can you really make a lot of money doing this?"

Seeing articles like this one about an author who got a million-dollar deal for a diet book might lead some people to think that being an author is the road to riches. Uh, no, not really. Not even close. Actually, that isn't reality for about 99.9 percent of authors. I really don't know why the big publishers give advances like that. Are they really that scared that another publishing house is going to publish the book and make millions? Really?

In reality, a big publisher might pay the typical author an advance around $15,000 to $20,000, and if you're with a small publisher, it's around $3,000 to $5,000, so we are not getting rich. In fact, we're not even paying the bills unless we have a second job. "Advance" is short for "advance on royalties," so you have to "earn out" your advance before you ever see another penny of royalties. In other words, if you get a $5,000 advance, and you are getting a 10% royalty on the wholesale price of a $20 book, you will earn $1 on every book, which is 10% of wholesale, assuming wholesale is 50%. (Yes, this means the bookstore makes more money on the book than the author, but we already knew life wasn't fair.) That means that after 5,000 books are sold, you are now out of debt to the publisher -- your book has earned the $5,000 that they paid you before publication -- and now they will start sending you royalty checks twice a year on the books that are sold.

And how many copies do most books sell? That is pretty much impossible to answer, even with a ballpark figure. A first-time author's novel sells around 5,000 copies, but could sell tens of thousands. When it comes to non-fiction, you can't provide any type of meaningful number because it varies wildly by genre -- and yeah, diet books tend to sell very well, along with books telling people how to get rich or find the secret of success. But some non-fiction books sell a thousand copies while other sell more than a hundred thousand or even a million. But you can see that unless a book sells at least 20,000 copies a year, you are not even above poverty level without a day job.

So, why do people write books? Because we love to write, and we love to share our knowledge or our stories with readers. I've been writing ever since I was a young girl. It is just something that I have to do, along with eating and breathing. If you're a writer, you understand this. But if you're not a writer, maybe there is something else that you absolutely love to do, and you would do it every day, even if no one paid you -- like playing the piano or drawing.

Although we may not be rolling in the dough, writers are enjoying a rich life. We may very well complain about the lack of financial riches, but at least we are doing something we really love.

Almost done!

I just finished reading the galley for EcoThrifty. It's so beautiful! If I sound like an expectant mother, that's because the experience is pretty similar -- at least mentally. (No morning sickness, thank heavens!) Seeing an electronic galley for your book is sort of like seeing an ultrasound of your baby. There it is on the screen, and you can hardly wait until you're actually holding it! Although it takes about as long to see a book concept come to life as it does to grow a baby, that's where the similarities end.

With a baby, you don't have any control over whether you get a boy or a girl, one with blue eyes or green, or one that grows up to be short or tall. With a book, you are responsible for how it turns out. You'll get the kudos if it's good, and you'll get the blame if anything is not so good. And that is where the angst comes in! You know that no one has ever written a perfect book, but that's the goal.

One thing that will never cease to amaze me about writing a book is how many mistakes there are in the galley, even though the author has read and revised multiples times, and a professional editor has read and edited multiple times. I can see why self-published books have a reputation for having a lot of typos and errors. While it may not be that hard to write a well crafted blog post or magazine article, there is a big difference between cranking out 1,000 words and 70,000 words! When reading the galleys, I made a point of getting up and walking away from the computer at the end of every chapter. Even then, I'm sure it is still easy for me to miss a mistake because I've read it so many times, I know what it says!

And while we're on the subject of self publishing, I'm not sure I'd ever do it because putting out a book requires a huge amount of work by many people. While I'm proofing the galleys, copies have also gone out to reviewers, potential endorsers, and someone to write the foreword. After corrections are made to the galley, another person will go over it with a fine tooth comb and make sure all of the corrections were made and no new ones were introduced into the text.

Between the time that I finished revising the manuscript and was waiting for the galleys, I wrote up a proposal for my next book, so I'm also waiting for my publisher to get back to me with a yea or nay on that subject. As I was writing EcoThrifty and promoting Homegrown & Handmade, I swore I would never again write one book while promoting another one, but I like the idea of having the books come out in the fall just in time for another Mother Earth News Fair. It's a great place to launch a new title with such an enthusiastic audience. If my proposed topic for book number three flies, however, I'm expecting it to be much easier to write than EcoThrifty, which required a ton of research! And a lot of that research wound up being edited out of the book. So in other words, I wasted a lot of time.

So, now my list of corrections will be sent back to the publisher, and I wait ... wait for the corrected version to come back to me and wait for feedback on the next book proposal. And in the meantime, I can get caught up on blogging and all those other things that have been pushed to the back burner.

Blurbs for Ecothrifty

I'm having a terrible time thinking of whom to ask for blurbs for Ecothrifty. Blurbs, or endorsements, are those quotes on the back cover of books from famous people who say how much they love your book. It was easy for Homegrown & Handmade -- just ask other people who've moved out to the country to live a more natural life, and there are plenty of them who've written books, so people will recognize their names. However, figuring out who likes saving money and doing the green thing is harder! Rich and famous people don't need to save money. Although there are plenty of celebrities who live greener lifestyles, they're about as hard to contact as hermits -- maybe harder.

So, if you can think of anyone who is into greener living and saving money and has a name that people might recognize, speak up! And if you also happen to know how to contact them, you get extra points!


And if you haven't already "liked" it, head on over to Facebook and check out the Ecothrifty page!

There's good news -- and bad

My writing life seemed to be going extremely well about a month ago. I was notified that Homegrown and Handmade was a finalist in the Book of the Year competition held by Foreword, which is a publishing industry magazine. Then I received word that the book was going back to the presses for a second printing because the first 5,000 copies had almost sold out! And I heard that my second book would receive an endorsement from Mother Earth News! I felt like jumping up and down almost all day for a couple weeks.

Then the rug got yanked out from under me when I received a letter from someone claiming to have a trademark on the word that was to be the title of that book -- yes, the book that Mother Earth News had just endorsed, the book that was almost through the editing process, the book whose cover was already complete, the book that was already in my publisher's fall catalog, the book that was already on Amazon and other online sites for pre-order.

I won't bore you with all of the legal details, but in our increasingly global economy, this type of things should not come as a huge surprise. The man with the trademark on that word is from France, and although he only uses his trademark on a website that is in French, he decided to trademark the word in the U.S., Canada, and other countries. It never really crossed our minds that anyone would trademark a word that is being used on no less than 16,000 websites, according to Google.

The last two days have been a whirlwind of emails between myself and multiple people at the publishing house, trying to figure out what we should use for the new title. I voted for Ecothrifty, but there were some other possibilities on the table, and I even tossed out the question on Facebook to see what my friends thought, and Ecothrifty seemed to be the favorite there also, although there were a lot more possibilities suggested than I had ever dreamed of! Maybe I should ask people on Facebook to help me name my next book?

So, this afternoon the decision was cemented to use Ecothrifty as the new title. The editor has done a find/replace in the manuscript, and ecothrifty works perfectly in place of the old word. Ecothrifty has replaced the former word in the book's cover. Being about the same length as the previous title, it was easy to just replace the old word without needing to redesign the cover. If you don't look at the cover closely (on the right), you might not realize the title has changed.

Today I also sent the final copy of the manuscript back to the editor, and it will now be sent to the page designer who will turn it into a book. I should be kicking back with a glass of wine to celebrate, but instead, I'm scrambling to create a new Facebook page for the book with the new title, and I just replaced all of the old title info on this website. I suppose I should be relieved that this unpleasant chapter of my life seems to have ended, and I am, but I also have a dreadful headache, so maybe I'll just go to bed early tonight.

Is it writer's block?

I post on this particular blog so seldom that is it unlikely anyone has wondered why -- other than me! I remember saying once that I had writer's block when I was in college, but even then I think I realized that it was just an excuse. And I still think that "writer's block" is an excuse for someone who is simply avoiding writing for whatever reason. If you say you want to write, but you're not writing, do you know why?

I have a pretty good idea why I don't post on this blog very often, and it has nothing to do with writer's block. It has everything to do with worrying that no one wants to read whatever is on my mind that day. I've started nearly a dozen different blogs in my life, and I've managed to keep up with one religiously since 2006 -- my Antiquity Oaks blog, which chronicles my farm life. When I succeeded at that one and "failed" at so many others, I came to the conclusion that it had to do with passion. I was passionate about my life on the farm, and I couldn't wait to share it with my blog readers. And I do believe that passion plays a big part.

A writer's blog seemed like a great idea, but I'd always resisted it because I wasn't sure that anyone would want to read what I might write about writing or the writing life -- even though I was passionate about the subject. But after I got my first book published, I convinced myself that a writer's blog made sense. Now I'm not so sure. There have certainly been plenty of times that I've thought about posting on here, but I'd talk myself out of it. I'd tell myself something like No one wants to read that or People might think you're just full of yourself if you write that.

The simple truth is that most writers have a horrible fear that whatever they write is just terrible. And the more personal it is, the more you worry that a rejection of that writing is a personal rejection. A few months ago, Jenna Woginrich, author of Barnheart and Chick Days, blogged about how nervous she was talking about her personal homesteading journey at the Mother Earth News Fair last September. She said that she had no problem talking about chickens or sheep, but talking about herself was really tough. That's how I feel when it comes to writing about my writing life.

So, I'm going to try to get over that. I'm always saying that life is a journey, and we need to step out of comfort zone if we're ever going to get anywhere, so here goes!

Writing goals for 2012

The last year has been an amazing year for me as a writer, and I'm looking forward to an even better 2012. I'm one of those people who sets goals, writes them down, and revisits the list sometime. Early in 2010 I found a list that I had made five years earlier, and it had some pretty big goals -- get a masters degrees, teach college, and publish a book. There were a few other things on there, but the only thing I had not accomplished was to publish a book, so I realized I had to get moving. Off and on, I'd been working on a memoir of my homesteading adventures, which friends kept telling me I needed to write, and I decided to really commit myself to it in 2010. And I did. I had written about 11,000 words by September.

I was speaking at the Mother Earth News Fair in Pennsylvania at the end of September, and that's when I met my publisher. It was a dream come true, but it was not "like winning the lottery," which was what one of my children said. I had worked hard as a writer for more than 20 years to get to that day, and I still had to actually write the book. Rather than a memoir, they wanted a how-to book, which I was happy to write because I love what I do on our homestead. I could talk about this stuff all day, so it was easy to write a book where I could share my hard-won knowledge, which I'd acquired over the past nine years.

Most of 2011 was spent writing and revising and then seeing Homegrown and Handmade hit bookstores. And now I'm working on Ecofrugal, which will be published in the fall of 2012. And I'm in the early stages of proposing another book.

I have two writing goals for 2012. One is to start writing for magazines again. I used to do a lot of magazine writing, and I miss it. Plus, writing books does not make one rich. (Most of us don't get million dollar advances.) So, the additional income will be nice.

My second writing goal for 2012 is to find a publisher for my homesteading memoir. Yeah, I know memoirs are tough to sell unless you're rich and famous (or slept with someone rich and famous, or your spouse slept with someone rich and famous), but I'm ready for the challenge. There are quite a few homesteading memoirs out there that have sold quite well, such as The Dirty Life and The Bucolic Plague. Both of those books, however, were written by people with no children. Having children in our homesteading adventure adds a whole lot of interesting wrinkles to the story.

To help me reach these goals, I've purchased the 2012 Writer's Market, and I'm thinking about how I need to schedule my life to make more time for writing. I've also subscribed to several magazines that I want to write for, so I can see what kind of articles they run and how they handle the topics.

I'd love to hear about your goals, and what are you doing to reach them!

To blog or not to blog

The last couple days, maybe the last couple weeks, have been harder than usual. This time of year is usually hard for me because we grow most of our own food, and this is harvest, canning, and freezing time, as well as back-to-school, which means that my professor-husband is not around as much to help with everything. This is normally my annual panic time, but this year is even worse than usual because I have a book coming out later this month, and my next book is due in January.

And then life has a way of throwing some curve balls at me -- you, too, I'm sure. That's just life. There are so many things about which I'd love to vent right now -- the man who blurted at me that you can't feed the world with organic food, the bizarre house guest, or my daughter's irrational college roommate. All of these things take emotional energy and mental storage space. I should be working on my next book or freezing tomatoes or at least knocking off a few things from my ever-growing, to-do list, such as the 30-minute keynote that I'm doing Sunday night. And then I realize that I'm falling behind on two of my blogs, and the urge is to write about what's on my mind, but is it really a good idea?

I've been writing for publication my entire adult life, and even in my teen years, if my high school newspaper counts, and one thing I learned early on is that your editor is not your therapist. The rest of the world really does not want to hear about your little day-to-day troubles, and a good editor won't publish rants or vomit essays. When I started blogging on Antiquity Oaks in 2006, I never really made a conscious decision about complaining. It was just a given that I wasn't going to whine on the blog.

In today's world, everyone can publish their thoughts to the world without an editor to strike out snarky sentences or nix an entire essay that seems pointless in the grand scheme of life. There may not even be an informal friend-editor in your life to say, "Are you really sure you want to share this?" I'm not saying that any particular topics are off limits. I am saying that -- as with food -- it's all about presentation. Although no one wants to hear a blow-by-blow recounting of the man who started an argument with me, he did make me think about some very important points that will find their way into my upcoming talks on Why Homegrown and Handmade. My bizarre house guest gave me fresh insight into how clueless most Americans are about their food. And the roommate situation is causing me to revisit the information I taught in college about conflict resolution.

Great writers have shared extremely personal moments in their lives, but they did it in such a way as to find common ground with their readers. They went beyond venting. They looked for deeper meaning in their experiences. When you read a vomit essay (one where the author just blows it all out), you finish and say, "Wow, she had a bad day." But when you read a really good essay on a personal topic, you identify with the writer, and when you're done, the deeper meaning and the universal truths stick with you. Do I always succeed at this? I doubt it. But it's a good goal.