Great Expectations

There has always been a lot of hype about the income of authors. Mostly, this is pure myth--the wealthy part-- but the case can also be made that the talk is about the tiny handful of authors that are at the very tiptop of the pyramid and has nothing to do with the 'real' world, average author.

Yes, pyramid.

We can't escape them.

At the very, very top there are people making big bucks. Some of them might actually be well-to-do in the true sense of the word, but its highly doubtful that any of them has ever managed to get even a toe on the lowest rung of the one percenters--the stinking rich.

That said, you can still set your sites on the top and a few of you are bound to get there, but you will be far more happy if you accept that that is a dream that may or may not materialize and that it is virtually unheard of for anyone to make it there without publishing a LOT of books before that happens.

In other words, if you sent us a short story or even a full length book and you either haven't published at all before, or you've self-published a smattering of books--each in a different genre--you should have very low expectations of starting pay.

This is work, a LOT of very hard, mostly thankless, work. No pay at all if you miss the market and you're completely ignored by readers. Low pay if you're just starting out because you have no name to grab their interest--and nothing to look forward to if you don't work hard to find your niche in the market--and produce.

Develop a thick skin--there are trolls out there who go out of their way to be cruel and nasty for no reason at all that I can figure except that they're just a-holes.

Be prepared to be flexible. Don't doggedly stick to a series or story element that isn't selling. Take a deep breath, step back, go see what IS selling and take a new road.