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The Finances of Publishing - Letters to a Young Editor 4

June 7th, 2007 | business, editing, faith and work, publishing

My last post in this series is about a lot more than just editing. You see, publishing is not a business with wide and generous margins. Certainly authors can’t expect to earn a tremendous amount of money directly from publishing. But even the biggest wigs in publishing aren’t running around making the Fortune 400 lists.

Now that so much good content is published online for free, these margins are only going to get narrower.

But those of us called to publish and write and edit still have to put food on the table. How does that work? Here’s the last question: 

4. Is it, do you suppose, financially feasible for a single person to live in the suburbs of a major city, with only an entry-level publishing job and very part-time work in the food industry?

 

I do think that can be financially feasible, but it can also require patience and extreme financial restraint.

No credit cards. Strict cash budget. Get a roommate. Prioritize your spending. Put a checklist for the month on the fridge. Stick your grocery money in an envelope at the beginning of the month and don’t exceed it. (And hide the envelope from your roommate. Just in case.)

Keep a credit card for emergencies. But put it inside your freezer in a bowl of ice. That way you have all the time it takes the ice to melt to remember how you don’t really need to be going out to eat tonight.

You can eat spaghetti again.

Ok, the ice thing may be crazy, but the concept is sound. Protect yourself from impulse purchases.

Parttime work in the food industry has supported many a starving artist. My best friends in New York earn at least as much money from the food industry as they do from their artistic endeavours. Mary DeMuth suggested in her comment yesterday, break into publishing by doing some projects for free. Certainly my acting friends have not turned down roles in good shows just because those shows paid little–or nothing.

Of course, you shouldn’t plan to martyr yourself for art or writing or editing!

Use Monster.com or Payscale.com to estimate a reasonable salary for yourself in your field of interest. For example, a copy editor in New York makes around $36,000. (I was surprised at how high that was.) Of course, that is an estimate. And it presumes the jobs are available. And it doesn’t factor in the cost of living in New York City.

I’ve heard that entry-level publishing jobs have high turnover. That’s good for you in some ways.

Treat your life like a business. Estimate the salary. Estimate the cash flow. And plan your spending appropriately. Prioritize your desires and cut the rest.

My wife and I have cut everything down to the bare essentials. We don’t have cable. We don’t eat fancy food. We don’t go on expensive dates except on rare occasions. (Most of our dates are on the couch with a rental.)

And we’ve decided not to let that depress us. God is good. Life is good. We have two wonderful children and a very supportive families.

Our lives can glorify God even when we don’t keep up with the Joneses.

Maybe especially then.


Viewing 7 Comments

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    Okay, I distinctly remember Riess, Crouch, Winner and Crosby answering this question (can you live as a writer?) at the Calvin Festival...

    You can get their answer here (it is both less hopeful and more hopeful than one might expect)...

    http://llbarkat.com/justsayno.html
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    My first agent, Chip MacGregor, said he'd never met a great writer who wanted to be published who wasn't eventually published. So, take heart, all. Hone your craft.

    As to money. It takes a while to make a living. The better income is to write for magazines, the Internet, and periodicals because that income comes in at regular intervals. Books? Well, first you need several books you've written that have "earned out" their advances. And you need a few contracts to keep you writing into the future.

    Most books don't break out. Most sell less than 5000 copies (which usually means you wouldn't earn out your advance). The key is quantity.

    I'm getting close. Four books behind me, one releasing in July, five more ahead of me in the next two years. I'm guessing I can make a living in 2008, perhaps. We'll see.
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    I'm reading all of this - and understanding very little of it and can therefore leave no helpful comments because I don't understand the need or the desire to write and publish - perhaps teaching or counseling, now that might be a different matter! to me - writing is still torture
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    "Keep a credit card for emergencies. But put it inside your freezer in a bowl of ice. "

    Marcus - I've heard of a lot of ideas to mitigate impulsive spending but this is a new one! Have you actually done this?

    "And we’ve decided not to let that depress us. God is good. Life is good...Our lives can glorify God even when we don’t keep up with the Joneses."

    I want to encourage you about this - there is God glorifying faith in possessing that outlook. When you live with joy and contentment even if others have more material possessions, you're saying that God is a treasure better than material wealth. You are honoring Him by saying "there is nothing I desire beside you" (Psalm 73:25)
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    Susan, some people might say you are lucky that you don't feel the need to write. Though as a teacher, I wrestled with similar financial issues. At least teaching had a base salary.

    ESI, I've never actually done the ice thing. However, I do keep all of my credit cards bound together with a rubberband in one of our cabinets. For me, the annoyance of having to fish the credit card out is enough. (I should add that my wife has plenty of restraint and carries all of her credit cards without using them. But I think she's a rare bird.)
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    And, ESI, thanks for the encouragement and the verse. I know this cognitively. It's letting go of the greed and envy in my heart that is so difficult--especially when so much of our society depends on consumerism.
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    Oh, yes, as a teacher, I feel similar financial pressures. And yet, the flexibility it allows is not a bad trade off for the money it doesn’t pay.

    I wish I did feel the need to write though, or at least just did not hate it so very much. I can manage small things – like an occasional blog entry – but manuscripts and grants – I always feel them to be a huge burden – something that must always be birthed before the gestational period natural for me is done – so I stay in constant trouble at work for not being prolific enough.

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