Making 40K With Only Your Writing…

My 20 Books to 50K Post Got Me Some Questions…

I tend to use $40,000 instead of $50,000 in any math. Just easier and I know of few writers who would not settle for making $40,000 on their fiction every year. And it is a number that can be grown from.

Also a number that will cause you to change your business structure unless you are doing something really stupid like spending 35K to make 40K.

The problem is that most of the questions I get about this boils down to: “How?”

And that I can’t even begin to answer in five or six emails. Maybe in a three month seminar, maybe.

So for the moment, let me flip this question on its head to really show the issue at hand here in 2026.

To make $40,000 per year, you need to make about $3,400 per month.

You have 20 novels or collections or novellas selling. Major books standing alone. And they are wide around the world electronic and you have them up paper and hardback as well.

So divide 20 books into $3,400 so each book every month across all platforms must earn about $170.

So if you make about $5 per book, that means each book must sell 34 copies every month.

Reality is some books will sell a ton more every month for a time, others will never get close to that number.

And that is if you have great covers, branded correctly, and great sales copy and openings and endings.

So even though that amount is low, this is pretty much flat impossible in this modern world, at least to sustain for any amount of time.

More books means you have to not sell as many copies per book (Again, if every book is sales done right in presentation.) And more books help in the discoverability math.

So if all you are doing is the basics of getting your books out wide, and have spent little to no time learning sales and branding, $40,000 is a ways out of reach I’m afraid, even if you are over 20 books. Heck, you could be at 100 books and it still won’t be working very well for you, if at all.

So how did I answer the letters I got? Simply that the writers have to do the basics first, that is a key to so much. And they have to have sales and branding nailed down completely (most do not).

Then they have to look around at how others (outside of ad scammers) are doing it. If you can’t come up with at least 15 to 20 more cash streams from just your books and your brands that you can control (not licensing), you have found your problem with your income.