| Speaking directly to the literary side of things, there is very little money to be had, and it's easy for little things to eat away what little money that you can make.¹ Looking over my records, my lifetime income from writing literary works is less than $600 and that's with an MFA and a pretty good publication record. Journalism was a better bet for being able to make a living at before the internet ate the news. Putting aside tech writing contracts, the most I ever got for writing was $1000 for a review article for U&lc back in the 90s. U&lc no longer exists and freelance paychecks haven't really grown since those days either.² Keith Gessen, in 2006, wrote an article on money for the magazine he co-founded, n+1, which is available here: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-4/essays/money/ The only thing that's changed in the intervening 15 years is that the income is lower, the opportunities fewer and the expenses are higher. Bottom line: it can be a side gig, but not much more than that unless you're extraordinarily lucky. --- 1. Thanks to the pernicious impact of submittable, it is all too common for publications to charge a ~$3 submission fee for online submissions. It seems like a reasonable thing, but given that a 2% acceptance rate is a good number, that means that you'd have to make $150 on average for every accepted piece just to break even. Most markets pay less. I have adopted a solid rule against paying submission fees. I will very rarely pay an application fee for a conference or entry fee for a contest, but even that I tend to avoid. 2. Perhaps the most depressing thing about reading John Fante’s Ask the Dust were the dollar amounts that were mentioned in the novel. Magazines paid more in nominal dollar amounts for stories in the 1930s than they do now. |