[chubot]

The closest thing to a full time job that pays a living wage in the arts is to become a professor

I think many people here are missing the career of a tattoo artist (though the OP was asking about literature, not visual arts).

They can get paid as much as contract programmer -- $30 to $100 an hour -- or even a dentist, e.g. $200-300/hour if independent and well known.

Ironically, tattooing is one of the few forms of art that's not economically affected by computers -- you can't download a tattoo :) Computers made every form of knowledge easier to copy and thus less expensive: software (open source), journalism, literature, music, and movies. But it didn't do that to tattoos.

I think they also follow Jamie Zawinski's law, i.e. write software that will help your users get laid. People will pay more for tattoos than they would pay for something they hang in their living room. (This isn't a negative statement about the art form; I don't think anyone who tattoos would disagree that it's often sexual)

[yann2]

wut? People are getting tattoos to get laid now?