I can ask for a £25,000 advance, but then you spend a year writing the book, and £25,000 is a loan against sales, and you can easily spend five years earning out. So that's £25,000 for six years.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.'
I know one author whose royalty income has been halved from £34,000 a year to £16,000.
If the books are selling, the money will follow.
One of the great things about books is you can afford to do anything.
Maybe this is pathetic, but I still dread producing a book that doesn't earn back its advance. I hate obligations that are financially foggy.
I don't want to wait more than a year and a half or two years between books.
My first book took five years to write and I made $1,000 on it. The second took three years and I made $3,000. All this time I was a housewife being supported by a husband. I was very lucky.
When I was about eight, I realised the person whose name was on the book got money for it, and it seemed almost too good to be true that you could get paid for making things up.
Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.
Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.
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