Don't give up your day job

I'm not a full-time writer. But then how many writers can afford to be these days? I spend my days in a cramped office, answering a telephone to speak to people who are equally bored with their jobs and just as fed up of the daily grind as I am. The sad truth of the matter is that in the book business authors are at the very bottom of the food chain and few scrape by let alone make a decent living from their work. We're all hearing about the problems publishers are having, the fall of Borders UK, and the extinction of independent bookstores. In all of it, the ones who have been hit the hardest are the writers. Every twist and turn in the market affects us. Every time Amazon pulls one of its stunts, like the recent one with Macmillan and the removal of buy buttons, writers are suffering as a result.

A writer friend of mine saw an ad in the local paper for a job that involved handing out leaflets in a mall for two afternoons a week. She calculated the amount she's earned from sales of her five books during the past year and concluded that she'd make more money handing out those leaflets. Me, I'm hoping to come close to earning that much money!

If you want to write books, do it for the love of writing, and don't give up your day job.