Can you make a living as an author?

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors

The other day I read one of those infuriating and unfortunately evergreen posts that I’m sure you’ve come across a hundred times: something like “Anyone who writes a book thinking they’re ever going to have an actual self-sustaining career as an authors is deluded; you’ll be lucky if you ever get a 5K advance (as a traditionally published author) or sell 200 copies of a book (as an indie author).”

Well then, I have hundreds of deluded author friends. Because a very large percentage of the authors I can truly call friends ARE making a living as authors.

Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

Is there any guarantee you’ll make a living as an author? No. But couldn’t you say that about ANY job? ANY profession?

In any job that exists, (except apparently the highest office in the US), if you don’t show up to work, or if you show up to the job and only shuffle around without completing any meaningful tasks, you are not going to make a living because you will be fired. You have to show up to work and you have to actually do the job, right?

So when I read something like that above post I started with, just the tone of it makes me think - That is someone who didn’t put in the work.

Or possibly, he never really understood what the work is.

There are no guarantees, but not doing the actual job is a good guarantee that you won’t get the payoff.

Now, I’m the first to admit that working at any kind of self-employment is usually harder than working at a traditional job because you have to be extremely self-motivated. You don’t have a boss telling you what the job is and how to do it.

As an author, you have to figure out for yourself what the job is and how to do it.

And that’s hard because there are so many ways to do this job and make a living at it.

But that’s also the good news, right? Because that means there is a way for you to make this author thing work for you.

There are quite a few different business models for being a professional author, and I believe that one of the most useful things I or any one of us authors/publishing professionals who blog here on Substack could do is publish a list of author business models.

I’m sorry to say I don’t have that for you today.

I do periodically try to coax groups of professional authors I belong to to define their own author business models so those business models can be collated into a useful document. But this idealistic goal unfortunately keeps getting pushed to the bottom of a TO DO list full of things like:

1. Finish book by June 1 deadline

2. Do something today to save democracy

3. Maintain sanity.

   Etc.

But the first step toward building your author business model is to realize that there is such a thing!

And what I can do, like today, is start to list and examine common strategies that work and that you can start to immediately incorporate into your week and your overall game plan, like:

• Multiple income streams

• 1000 True Fans

• The Rule of Seven

• Building a mailing list

• Marketing Monday.

In fact, since today is Monday, let’s take a look at that one.

(Of course if you’re in the UK, put this away for later and enjoy the holiday!)

Marketing Monday doesn’t have to be Monday, but the alliteration helps you remember to do it! And it is exactly what it sounds like it is. One day a week, instead of bouncing back and forth between doing your writing and whatever else is on your To Do list, you devote that chosen day solely to marketing. And marketing can be anything from posting on social media, setting up ads, answering email, writing a blog or interview, working on your premise and synopsis, writing a newsletter or starting one, or just reading about marketing strategies. Look at that - you’re already doing it!

Setting one day aside to work on just marketing is a more holistic way of working, because you’re focused. Doing several marketing tasks in a row, regularly, will give you inspiration for other marketing strategies you could be using.

And believe me, I don’t do Marketing Monday often enough myself, but when I do, I get exponentially more work done than when I just tackle marketing issues randomly throughout the week. And I find it keeps down my anxiety levels (you know what I mean!) because I know I’ve gotten a lot done for the week and that I’m regularly keeping up with the business side of this business.

Why not try it?

I’d love to hear other people’s experiences with the Marketing Monday (or whatever day) strategy.

Last week I created a permanent place for my story structure posts, following the chapters in my workbooks, so everyone can easily find posts with analysis and tricks for whatever section of your book or script you’re working on:

Write a book this year!

I’ll do the same with marketing posts, but here are some links to previous marketing posts for other strategies, which I’ll continue to add to.

• Alex

MARKETING STRATEGIES ROUNDUP

Identify Your Brand - with a Master List!

Marketing 101: Mailing Lists & Newsletters

Pitching at festivals (tips from Bloody Scotland)

What's your PREMISE? (Part 1)

What’s the EXPERIENCE of Your Book?

What is HIGH CONCEPT? What is a BIG BOOK?

Author Marketing 101: Book Festivals

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• Stealing Hollywood ebook, $3.99, also available as print workbook

• Writing Love ebook, $2.99

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All material © Alexandra Sokoloff, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors