Don't Quit Your Day Job, Published Author

We all have this image of the rich author, able to cruise around the world and enjoy the company of starlets in their prime, of driving sports cars and big-game fishing off the coast of Cuba with a member of the Kennedy family or walking into any bookstore in the country and seeing dozens of copies of our books on a life-size display with our name in beautiful lettering.

Well, you can probably thank people like Ernest Hemingway for these kinds of bald-faced lies, because the life of a published author is almost nothing quite like that, with a few possible exceptions. Any published author is rich in a sense - how many people can actually finish a novel or collection of short stories - but how many of them get considerably, classically rich? Very few, actually. If you go over to Rants and Ramblings: On Life as a Literary Agent, you can see the cold reality which faces most authors when that book finally makes it into print:

Example: a $10,000 advance
After agent commission: $8,500 to author
Paid in halves: You will get two checks, several months apart, for $4,250 each. If you set aside 20% for taxes, that leaves you about $3,400 to spend.
Paid in thirds: You will get three checks, several months apart, for $2,833. If you set aside 20% for taxes, that means you'll have $2,266 to spend. Perhaps it will cover the rent or mortgage payment for a month or two. But it's not exactly a kitchen remodel.

It's definitely eye-opening. I remember when, in college, I visited the home of Ernest Hemingway down in Key West. I heard a famous story that, while waiting on a car to arrive, Hemingway stayed in Key West and then didn't leave for another twenty years. I thought, "I want that. It sounds awesome." That is not entirely out of the picture for any writer, but the prospect of being a wealthy, jetsetting literary figure is slim. Unfortunately, that's the reality of it. However, if you're writing for all the life-affirming reasons, then you won't need to be wealthy to keep doing it. You'll do it because you love it, and beyond being a cliche, it's also the truth.

I mean, who wouldn't want boat loads of cash to write? I'm not saying getting paid is bad, even in vast sums of money, but it should not be the only reason for writing, nor should a lack of publishing success be what turns you away from writing. I stand by that statement, as hokey as it sounds.

Maybe You Shouldn't Quit Your Day Job Just Yet

Iain Banks - An Old Dog With New (Publishing) Tricks

The publishing industry is changing in big ways, and not necessarily just for the up-and-coming author. Even those with reasonable success have been hit by major changes, including authors like Iain Banks. Banks is perhaps most well-known for his violent, surreal novel The Wasp Factory. In addition to lowering his advances, Banks's publisher has decided to try new marketing tactics to sell his books:

With book publishers now facing the same potentially ruinous challenges of the digital era as newspapers, Banks has gamely agreed to act as guinea pig for his own publisher, Little Brown, which is releasing an abridged audio version of Transition free on iTunes (the first instalment went online last week, on the same day the print version was published). Is he really reduced to giving away his work? Banks seems sanguine – perhaps even a little resigned – about the whole thing: "I think [the podcast] is quite brave of my publishers. I hope they're getting it right. My agent said to me: 'What do you think about this?' I said: 'I don't know.' We've got our fingers crossed."

The lesson here may be that the monolithic author is probably going to be a thing of the past. After the generation of Stephen King and Dean Koontz and James Patterson goes away, the super high-quantity author (mostly) may not require the vast sums that he/she used to. It's my belief that, unless the major publishers restructure to account for changes in technology and the way that people read, publishing will slowly become more decentralized and will benefit the most self-driven authors. But that's just my take on what I see in publishing trends.

Iain Banks: Even at my age I still have something to prove
Video: Iain Banks on 'The Book Show'

Hemingway, Man for All Seasons

Ernest Hemingway is about as divisive a literary figure as can be found - mainly because of his portrayal of women in short stories and novels, but that's another post altogether - but his literary exploits aren't necessarily what draws a lot of people to him. Though novels like The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls have made him a prominent 20th century literary figure, he was, as much as anything else, an adventurer and sportsman, and his legend grows with each successive year.

The Art of Manliness has blogged a wonderful piece about Papa's exploits around the world, including one about his talents as a boxer:

Hemingway had practiced the sweet science since childhood and at one point was a successful amateur boxer. Following one of his victories in a fishing tournament in Bimini, the locals who had participated became angered at his ability to better fish waters they had fished their entire lives. Seeing an opportunity to combine his passions, he offered the locals a chance to win back their lost money. The terms were simple…go toe to toe with old Papa in the ring for three rounds and win, and the money would be theirs. The first challenger, a man who locals claimed could “carry a piano on his head,” made it only a minute and a half before the 35 year old Hemingway put him on the deck. The next three challengers suffered a similar fate, and Ernest went home with his prize money.

You can read the entire article on The Art of Manliness.