2012 Writing Income

Posting this manually as my WordPress cross-poster seems to have conked out today...

Ever since 2007, I've been doing my best to talk openly about my income as an author. It's occasionally awkward, but I also believe it's helpful to new and aspiring writers. If nothing else, it lets me play Mythbuster with the fairy tale that writers are all fabulously wealthy with their own built-in laser tag arena and fleet of customized DeLoreans...

My income posts from previous years are here: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.

2012 was an odd year. In many ways, it's the best year I've ever had as an author. My eighth book with DAW came out in hardcover, and went through four printings in the first few months. I won a Hugo award. I saw some of my books come out in audio format for the first time ever. The goblin books were re-released as a trade paperback omnibus, and also sold to the Science Fiction Book Club.

So it was a little weird at first to realize that I made significantly less money in 2012 than I did in the prior year. The grand total for 2012 was $33,598.19 before expenses and taxes and all the rest. Compare that to almost $43,000 from 2011.

I figured the reason for the drop was pretty straightforward: I didn't sell any new books to my U.S. publisher last year. The deal for Libriomancer and Codex Born was made in 2011, and while I have ideas for book three in the series, I haven't pitched it yet. So while 2012 saw some money for delivering the final manuscript for Libriomancer and the on-publication payment, it wasn't as much as the on-signing advance for those two books last year.

At least, that's what I had assumed ... and then I started looking at the numbers more closely. Thanks to royalties and subrights sales (audio and SFBC), my U.S. novels actually made more than they did last year. Turns out it was the foreign sales that saw the real drop, and I'm not sure why.

The income from my self-published titles jumped a bit, probably in part because I put another collection out midway through the year. I didn't write or sell much short fiction last year, which is part of why the miscellaneous income (from speaking fees, a few nonfiction pieces, and reprint sales) is the smallest category.

• Novels (U.S.): $25,800
• Novels (Foreign): $5,020
• Self-Published: $1,950
• Miscellaneous: $820

I'm still sorting out expenses for the year, but it looks like that's going to come in around $2000 or so, mostly for conventions. That's been fairly steady for several years now. I actually made it to a few more conventions, and did a little more traveling last year, but several of those were Guest of Honor gigs, which helped balance things out.

The other interesting thing (to me) is how erratic the checks were. I made a total of $115 in the month of January, but February was an awesome month, with more than $6000 showing up in the mail. March and April went the same way. The fact that I have a full time day job means I've got a steady income I can count on for most of our day-to-day needs, but if I'm ever able to go full time as a writer, I'm going to have to be a lot more careful about budgeting for the long term.

That was my 2012. Please remember I'm just one author, and you can't make sweeping generalizations from a sample size of one. But I hope the information is useful, and as always, I'm happy to answer any questions.

A Thank You from the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation

Hey, what’s this? Why, it looks like a BBC article about the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation fundraiser and sexism in SF/F cover art. Now, at a time like this, there are two choices. You can squee and dance around like a little kid because holy crap, a major news outlet is recognizing your fundraiser and contributing to an important conversation! Or you can play it cool.

If you need me, I’ll be Snoopy-dancing.

I haven’t quite completed all of the poses for the fundraiser yet. I had hoped to have everything done except the group pose (which we’ll be doing this weekend), but then I got caught up reading bad fiction for a different fundraiser.

However, I wanted to share this thank you from the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation to everyone who donated or helped to spread the word. Speaking for myself, the $15,000+ we raised greatly exceeded my best expectations.

What follows is the message I received from Al Meo of the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation:

For the past 22 years, the ASF has been funded through private donations and individual fundraising efforts such as yours.  Our board of directors and those involved with the foundation do so on a voluntary basis, no one  is paid…so all contributions we receive are used to benefit our girls and their families.

We want to express our sincere appreciation to your followers and all those who contributed to your fundraising event for their kindness and support.  Their extreme generosity helps us to continue our work in providing medical/adaptive equipment for girls in need as well as funding an educational and supportive conference for families. We also contribute to ongoing Aicardi Syndrome research and will soon be funding a new collaborative project which we hope will be successful in answering our many questions about this devastating syndrome. It is always our wish to find the cause of Aicardi Syndrome and to improve  quality of life for our girls.

From all of us at The Aicardi Syndrome Foundation, thanks for making a difference! We wish you all a very happy and healthy 2013!

Thank you all so much from me, as well.

And as I head off to ConFusion, I’ll leave you with one more cover pose…

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.