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.
8 Comments
Jason M
My wife and I are have started doing weekend festivals, fairs, and conferences. Our best one so far netted us about $800. But we’re still new and are still experimenting with finding the most lucrative ones. It’s quite possible to net 40K/year just doing weekend shows, apart from any online sales.
dwsmith
From a person who sold at conventions, that just made me shudder. But honestly, you are correct. And when we were doing it back in the Pulphouse days we made a lot more than that every year. But you have to be the right type of person to do that and manage your writing and publishing along with all the travel and expenses.Again, I shudder. (grin)
Jason M
No conventions here. Regular old festivals with corn dogs and carnie rides, not so much either. But we’re finding that arts and crafts fairs are particularly good. Our record so far is 65 sales in one day. But we’re new at it, and have at least 15 more events to do this year — we expect sales to pick up as the holidays draw nearer. We were featured on local Fox2 News last month during a fair, which drew a lot of people to our booth.
Sales are so easy now with Square. And the profit margin can’t be beat, currently around $9 per title. I’m moving titles in person that never sold online. We’re learning to upsell and bundle too.
But you’re right: you have to like chatting with people. And you have to be comfortable selling your own stuff. Lots of writers are pathologically self-doubting and would rather crawl into a sewer and die than publicly promote their own work.
dwsmith
Sounds great, but make sure you are doing all the calculations.
Cost of travel and lodging. Your time should also be valued in the calculation.
Gross income is great, but make sure you are not losing money in the net side of things.
Mangala McNamara
Useful to go through the numbers. Thanks, Dean.
topaz
Hi Dean,
thank you for this example math calculation.
I’m wondering what those cash streams might look like if licensing is not possible?
What comes to mind are
– direct sales
– Kickstarter
– patreon
Which are all different flavors of direct sales for me.
Everything else, even having the books up world wide at retailers, is licensing.
Could you give me a few examples of what you’re thinking about?
Thanks a lot.
dwsmith
You would count all the sales at reatailers. When I said no licensing, I mean not movies, television, games, and so on. Just what you are in control of.
Again, just to explain any one of the 15-20 methods I see would take pages. Heck, I do a Kickstarter mentorship alone to help writers do that correctly.
Again, even if I tried to write a book about all this, it would be very large.
James Palmer
I’d like to piggyback on what Jason M said. I’ve had pretty good success with local book and art shows and one day free to attend book events. They’re close, the table fee is small to nonexistent, and there aren’t a lot of other distractions for people’s time and money like at conventions. If I only sell a few books, at least it didn’t cost me a lot of money to attend. You also get to network and meet other artists and study their table setups.
Another great tip for events: have a deluxe edition hardcover or omnibus. Costs you about $20, but you can sell for $100. You can finance the creation of these with Kickstarters.