When I was in college, a friend of mine said they knew where Janet Dailey lived and we decided to drive by her house. Contrary to how the story has been retold, there was NO trespassing involved: see previous rule following blogs. Do it. Just like in any genre, some authors make quite a bit, some not so much. It takes awhile for an author to earn back their advance and for the publisher to determine reserves against returns.
Additionally, writers are typically paid twice a year. File Under: Jill's First Blog. Scriptwriters make, generally, considerably less than actors and directors. Not only this, but they rarely get decent participation deals backend deals that can be quite lucrative if a motion picture does well. The only ongoing compensation they receive is residuals. This award-winning novel takes place during the Civil War and follows Elle Burns, a former slave who goes undercover to spy for the Union.
Dane began writing in and has since turned out over 60 books. Yes, you read that correctly! Seriously, hold onto your hats because this one is shamelessly immodest. This one is part history, part mystery, part romance! But as the two of them set out to uncover the true scandal-makers, Piers proves himself a surprisingly useful accomplice.
Logan is the callous, cursed Prince of Torsund. Isla is the sweet youngest princess of Avlion. When they meet at a ball held by her father, sparks fly — and clothing flies off. Sweet, sexy, and savage all at once, this just-underpage novella is the perfect remedy to spice up a regular night in. Pippa Grant is another reigning ruler of the Amazon charts whose specialty is, for lack of a better term, total jerks.
Or at least they start off that way. With the help of their leading ladies — who are sometimes sweet, sometimes saucy, but always totally irresistible to the main guy — they turn over a new leaf and become much better humans. Lorraine Heath is an absolute staple of the romance genre. However, despite their quantity, her works never sacrifice quality — Heath has been especially praised for the genuine emotional depth and strong characterization in her writing.
Thus begins their relationship as co-conspirators… which of course, soon turns into something more. The delicious slow burn between the scoundrel and the lady also includes a pretty meaty social plot, peppered with plenty of tongue-in-cheek Dickens references. However, Jenkins makes a point of not writing exclusively about slavery. In order to represent a genuinely wide range of black history, most of her books take place between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement.
Though Jenkins is known for and very talented at spinning! In Bring on the Blessings , year-old Bernadine Brown takes her wealthy, adulterous husband to court — and wins.
After purchasing Henry Adams on the Internet, Bernadine must work together with its stubborn mayor Trent July to bring the town back to its former glory… and perhaps find some glory in each other as well. Beginning with a few quick duologies, Kleypas eventually escalated to elaborate multi-book series, her most famous being The Wallflowers and The Hathaways.
These books follow the members of various families in midth century London as they attempt to find love in one way or another. Amelia Hathaway has an awful lot on her plate. Cam, like Amelia, comes from not-so-noble stock — unlike her, however, he longs to return to it. This plan is complicated by only one thing: his desire for Amelia.
Expert handyman Caleb Strong get it? But actually having to watch him work proves a challenge in the self-control department… especially when she starts fantasizing about him working on something else.
On the other hand, if you prefer flawed, vulnerable heroes to totally confident ones, Adriana Locke might be more your speed. Sienna Landry gets off to a bit of a rocky start with small-town mechanic Walker Gibson — namely, she busts up the front of his truck. The Color of Heaven follows Sophie Duncan, a woman whose life goes off the rails when her daughter is diagnosed with leukemia and her husband cheats on her. John, a marquess and fellow eschewer of society?
Of course, as Callie and Gabe grow closer, she realizes that she might not be such a nontraditional girl after all. The only question now is: can she tell him? If all the other books in your genre have pictures of hot guys on the cover and yours has a vector or a woman with a cat on her shoulder, it confuses the reader and they will pass right by your book. The cover needs to make it easy for a reader to know at a glance what they will be getting if they pick up your book.
Two key places where you can grow your readership are your website and newsletter. Not having either of these was a mistake Angela Nicole made in the beginning. To be a successful business owner, you need to strategize.
Brittney Olson agrees on the importance of being a book ahead. So so so many mistakes. If you do this, then you should make money off your book to fund the next one. Do that first. Thank you to the amazing romance authors who contributed the mistakes they made when starting out.
As a first-time romance author, I hope you can take these examples and apply them to your own author career. Best of luck on your romance-writing journey! Michelle is a mom of boys, author, illustrator, and former accountant on a mission to prove accountants are just as exciting as lawyers through her financial thriller series starring Cynthia Webber, CPA! TAGS: writing fiction. What we wish we had known. Have you tried ProWritingAid yet?
What are you waiting for? It's the best tool for making sure your copy is strong, clear, and error-free! Michelle Cornish Author and Illustrator. Follow us. Popular Articles The Writing Process. The Best Free Writing Apps. I wonder what the publisher expected to pay and what the editing actually cost them. If I had chosen to self-publish that one, to be honest, I would have ceased paying for editing much earlier in the process, with consequences to match. I totally agree! Editing is crucial.
In my mind it is a huge aspect of writing a book. I think the Authors who spent the lower end of the range would have had smaller books — say between 10, to 25, words. So it is hard to compare when there are different word counts.
I think people are being a bit economical — with the truth! My editor helped launched Steven King and John Grisham. Lakin, you spend less than two days per manuscript and make half a million dollars per year?
Genuinely curious. I love getting new info especially when backed up with studis and stats. Good job. I found the info useful. It justifies my spending habits; like paying for a great editor which incidentally is as hard to find as a great doctor or a great car mechanic.
I shopped around for nearly 10 years until I found a great editor who came along with a good graphic artist. I also discovered FB ads which I now use for my opinion posts twice a month and my book posts twice a month.
I do post on their Author Page and in their Amazon Forums. I publish on Kindle, Createspace and Smashwords. I hired a consultant to post on about groups on FB but I stopped recently. I wonder if i can use some of your findings and blogs in my marketing magazine.
All articles are linked to original and author is named if known. My magazine is called Indie Publishing News. I have a group on facebook where i help Indie Authors. Absolutely correct. Beta readers are great. Having other writers look over your work is great. Just know that writing and editing are different skills, particularly when it comes to copyediting. A Pulitzer winner might not know that the comma always goes inside the quotes in American English. This value is absurd. I think you left a zero off the amount a ker would pay for editing.
Editors are professionals and their fees reflect their experience and training. I edit my books first. Then, my editor does a proofreading in two comprehensive checks. This is what I do. My writing group goes over everything in process, which takes the place of a developmental edit, and beta readers catch problems before the MS goes to the copyeditor.
I applaud your statement that kers consider editing very important, but as a copyeditor I must chime in about the editing costs mentioned in this article. Thank you, Adrienne Montgomerie, C. It takes much, much longer to copyedit a book than to read the same book.
And it takes a professional. Second, I disagree that authors swapping editing services is a decent option. Editing is a profession that requires specific training. What is it to you if an author decides to do that?
If their book sells well and their readers are happy then what business is it of yours? Who cares what you think a decent option is? Just like editors, authors are running a business and have the right to make the decisions that are best for their situation.
There is a difference between writers who sweat bullets to bring a story to life, and writers who do it solely as a means to make money. Perhaps some research into these things would add a layer of useful data. I appreciate your comment, Dan, and the word count of the manuscript is definitely important. And that copyeditor will examine each and every word of the manuscript, which takes time.
Lol at the people that are whining at the article for daring to mention authors are not willing to pay them more than what their book is probably going to make. I understand that authors must think about how much profit their books will make, but we editors must think about earning a living wage.
Just my two cents. Who knows, maybe you all are right. Lol rather at editors becoming filled with rage at successful authors who minimize their roles. Very interesting to see the conflict of interest here.
How can you not use an editor? Are you a trained CMOS editor? Often more. Roughly 3 errors she fixed. I think part of the difference is a lot of indies do several rounds of beta editing with bloggers or even other authors before sending it off to editing.
So they skip paying for content editing all together. Not only does it cut that cost out, but it gives a more up-to-date view of what readers are buying. This came in very handy when I wrote a book where one of the characters had childhood cancer. My editor never went through that experience.
But one of my beta readers did. Which is what I do, on about half my books. Interestingly enough there is NO pattern of sales or reviews based on which I self-edited and which ones I paid someone to edit. How much, on average, did you pay for line editing grammar, punctuation, stylistic changes, paragraph breaks, etc. How much, on average, did you pay for copyediting for grammar and punctuation of one book?
How much, on average, did you pay for someone to proofread one book? If you used software to proofread your book, how much did it cost? In addition to showing a more realistic rate for editing, these questions would also allow this study to examine how many authors are opting for developmental editing, line editing, and proofreading and how many rely on software rather than people to do it because these are very different things.
The wording of these questions needs work, but this is just an idea on how you could perform a more nuanced analysis next year. On a somewhat related note, I edit a lot of grant proposals, abstracts, and other research-related material every day. The first read through involves checking global issues like headings and content blocks, which is somewhat like what Shawn does but for non-fiction. The person then fixes those things and sends it to me again.
During the second pass, I make suggestions related to consistency e. I tend to line- and copy-edit at the same time, not everyone works that way.
Outside of academia, I write science fiction. However, this can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: a slap-dash publication is unlikely to do well if content problems or errors prompt readers to stop reading. Even though I have hundreds if not thousands of hours of editing and proofreading under my belt, I still hire a proofreader at the very least. Like me, I assume editors enjoy putting food on the table and making a living wage.
I would not, however, expect to pay the same rate for line-by-line or developmental edits as for proofreading. The former is much more time intensive, so I expect the rate to be exponentially more.
I do not, however, see this structure reflected in the material here, but oversights like these happen. That is, it blatantly ignores wider implications of or problems with the data — namely that this survey does not take into account different types of editing and the rates thereof. No one is forcing authors to pay anything at all, but I would tend to agree with the editors who have chimed in here that these rates seem delusional for actual editing as opposed to proofreading.
To that end, I hope the authors consider the questions I proposed at the beginning of my comment. I suspect attending to these distinctions would result in more realistic expectations for services and awareness on behalf of authors that editing is a multi-faceted and time-consuming endeavor. I suspect cultural ideology that diminishes arts and language is somewhat to blame. Anyway, I would like to thank Written Word Media for gathering, analyzing, and sharing their data.
Your work has certainly given me a lot to think about, and I thank you for your contribution. I hope that my response is taken for what I intend it to convey: thoughtful consideration of the material. I did, however, have some thoughts I wanted to share. As an academic, the pursuit of knowledge is paramount to me. As new needs are identified, so too are new metrics — you are not alone in this.
It happens to me in my research all the time. Thanks again for your work. Thanks Kris for your feedback and for pointing out the different types of editing that are out there. Research is always an ongoing process, and the survey you conducted is a great starting point for everyone involved in book publishing.
Thank you for reading and considering my feedback. This is as very, very good point. They find the plot holes, timeline issues, things that need to be worded differently, boring areas, etc. The key is, of course, finding people who are good at this.
Then I pay for a final round of proofreading with a different set of eyes. You are quite right: having the right people to do this is essential. She has both the science background and a eye for detail, so she acts as a litmus test for plot holes, scientific plausibility, and consistency. My mother is a grammar nazi and was compared to Steinbeck by a couple of reviewers when she was still writing and doing the traditional publishing circuit.
This is, however, a mixed blessing. The trouble with family is that they sometimes sugar-coat their feedback. I only mention this because authors need to consider dynamics with their families and friends if they go that route. Nonetheless, I revise according to their comments, and then I line edit from the last sentence of the manuscript all the way back to the beginning.
For whatever reason, going in the order opposite to how I wrote it allows me to catch more errors. After that, I send it to my proofreader. Because I write science fiction, my manuscripts run a little longer than most. While I pay for proofreading, I do not pay for editing…. In my case, I had to decide between using the money for a book cover and formatting or an editor. Still, I recognize that my time is better spent writing.
Happy writing, Just An Indie! The results are what they are for this particular survey. Obviously some paid less than that, unless they lied, but what purpose would that serve? Moving on. These are different things with different price points that reflect the time and work that goes into each process.
While the authors were given several price points to choose from, this survey does not reflect the range of editing types, which is problematic. It has nothing to do with being honest or not, but it has everything to do with the categories the respondents had to choose from. In this instance, this survey only presents part of the picture. Some have tried to say that editors have a role and I agree with a few caveats. Editors make far more than the average author these days Average being those who make considerably less than even 50k a year.
Thanks for that!!! I was sitting here reading all the editors comments. I worked with an editor who complained constantly about all the work he had to do for the little amount he was making. I paid a lot more to him than I ever made on my first novel.. I would love to spend more money on editing. And my dream is to reach a level of success that would allow me to pay editors what they are worth.
In the end, readers decide what they are and are not willing to pay for. If they can get by with a mix of beta reads and an inexpensive copyedit or proofread, awesome. If someone can do their own cover and it look professional, awesome. Developmental edits are more expensive. That is what editors are reporting. Please understand that a heavy copyedit of an 80,—word manuscript can take ninety to a hundred hours.
I favor authors who know what a good editor can do. I am aware that some professional editors will allow themselves to be exploited this way—mostly because most editors are women and we as a rule have not been taught how to advocate for ourselves.
As an aside, I did give birth twice. Neither time was I paid for my time conceiving, gestating, or giving birth to either child. I still have no problem with the fact that the obstetricians were paid gobs and gobs of money to deliver my children.
It does no one any favors — not writers, copy editors, or the reading audience — to create expectations that editors will work for the laughably low pay that you claim they will. I have no idea how you came to such a conclusion, or who you interviewed, but please visit the Editorial Freelancers Association website at the-efa.
I would think that the editing quote is because most of these authors are probably only getting proofreading done. Editing takes years of experience and professional development. The rates we charge should be commensurate with our professionalism.
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