How much money do you make as a writer?
I made a sum total of $9.24 in royalties in 2025, which is $9.24 more than I’ve ever made from my writing in any given year. That’s why I’ve come to consider this a watershed year. I’m hoping to have a larger figure in 2026, but I don’t expect I’ll break four figures for quite a while — if ever.
There are a few reasons for this. The biggest one, of course, is that my primary genre is still fan fiction. In most cases, it’s illegal to make money off of fan fiction. Even in the odd/rare case when it isn’t, the fan fiction community frowns on anything with a whiff of “commercial use.” The reasons for that could fill an entire book (or two) on their own, but suffice to say, I understand why that is and agree with the sentiment.
Another huge part of this is that I write part-time. My “day job” is my primary — and, at the moment, sole — source of income. This means that if I have to make a decision about time, the day job has to be my priority. The final big reason that I don’t earn money as a writer is because I haven’t published very much. That’s something I definitely can control, and I already have submissions out and plans to hopefully change that going forward.
According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, writers and authors had a median annual wage of $72,270 per year, but the lowest ten percent earned less than $41,080. Even writers on the New York Times bestseller list report incomes between $30K and $60K per year.
What’s also not mentioned in sources like the OOH is that authors’ incomes come in fits and starts, and it usually only shows up well after you’re done writing something. It’s not steady throughout the year, which is one of the reasons I expect I’ll be doing it part-time until I reach retirement age. My bills don’t come in fits and starts; I therefore can’t depend on an income that does.
Bottom line: this isn’t a job you do for the money. Yes, it’s possible to make money writing, but for fiction writers it can take years for that income to be a full-time source of support. In fact, some of your favorite authors are likely to be part-time. Many writers never do make the leap.
This doesn’t mean you should give up a dream of being a professional writer. It does, however, mean that you need to have alternative sources of income — and a lot of patience.
What training do I need to be a writer? What training have you had?
To write fiction, the only thing you need to be able to do is imagine a story. All of the rest of it is something that can be learned.
Most sources recommend a bachelor’s or a master’s degree in English, and that’s often the easiest way to learn the tools of storycraft. But it’s by far not the only way, nor is it the least expensive way.
The sum total of my writing “training” consists of short seminars that I’ve taken over the years. I don’t have a bachelor’s degree at all, and if I ever decided to go back to school, that degree would be in a specific area of business. That’s the field I work in for my day job, and it’s the field I write in under my real name.
The other advantage that I have is that my mother was an elementary school teacher who constantly corrected both my speech and my writing. I was never allowed to develop bad language or grammar habits, so I’ve never had to spend time unlearning such habits. But, truth be told, even bad speech and grammar habits can be dealt with by using a competent editor — and all writers, regardless of skill or experience, need to work with an editor at some point.
What advice would you give a beginning writer?
Two things: Read. And write.
It’s not possible for an author to be too widely read, and parenthetical notes in non-fiction or other genres I’ve read have turned into original story ideas in my own fiction. In fact, I would posit that as an author, you need to learn how to read anything — even the proverbial box top — with a critical eye. Why did the writer choose those particular words? What is the author trying to do by using those words? How do you, as a reader, react to them? Do you think you could reproduce that style of writing if you tried?
My own reading habits range from scholarly articles, to true-crime books, to category romances, to serious literary fiction. In fact, it’s easier for me to list what I don’t or won’t read, than it is to list what I do and will.
That ties into my second bit of advice. There is nothing wrong with learning to write by imitation. It’s how I’ve learned. At first, your efforts may not be sellable, but as I note above, this isn’t something you would do strictly for the money. After you’ve gotten a handle on imitating different writers and different types of writing, you’ll probably have enough skills in your toolbox to begin working on your unique voice and style.
The bottom line is that there’s a single-sentence answer to the question, “who is a writer?”
The answer: a writer is someone who writes.
The rest of it is just a debate about skills and styles.