Ponderings on Writing for Da Moneys. · 7:04pm Feb 13th, 2016
Hey, all.
In light of a personal one-year anniversary, I thought I’d do a little opinion blog on something that’s been on my mind for a while.
So here’s a pondering: how do people turn hobbyist writing into income?
Let’s go over some options.
Option 1: Commissions.
You publicly announce you are doing story commissions. You charge a rate per X words, maybe extra if it contains some objectionable materials.
The upside to this is that it is essentially freelance writing. You get an income based on the amount of work you do, and your products can then be made public for the enjoyment of everyone.
The downside is that, well, the customer is always right, even when they are not. People might ask for stories that have glaring plotholes in them. Maybe one character really needs to die in this person’s eyes, but the story suffers for it. Well, you can’t deny them that death, then. Maybe you're writing adult literature, and turn out to have forgotten to mention that you're very squeamish about a certain genre. Well, it's either getting over the squeamishness or passing up on money.
Another downside to it is the uncertainty factor. If you do commissioned work, assuming it’s fandom based, then your income is directly dependent on the demand for works based on said fandom. You literally depend on the success and popularity of a certain franchise or genre (let's call 'furry' a genre, just to keep it simple). That’s not even mentioning the legal side of things. People have to know who you are and that your quality is what they want at the prices you put it on.
Seems to be the most common of the lot.
Option 2: Patreon.
This one, I have to say, confuses me the most. As I understand it, you sign up on this website, Patreon, you say what it is you make, and based on what people donate, they get a say in what comes first or what gets made in the first place. People who pay more per month or per work get more say in the matter.
On the upside, instead of working with ‘customers’, you work with ‘bosses’, so to speak. If people are unhappy with your work, they stop donating. If you do not make enough good stuff, you don’t get the payments in the first place. It’s basically a glorified online tipping jar, that you can get fired from.
But the downside to that is, it seems to me that this mostly based on social media popularity. Your bosses will usually be the people who follow you the most. Your bosses will be your friends.
On top of that, I’ve seen some of the Patreon pages of the FimFiction authors. Even the ones with over a thousand followers don’t get that much in the way of paying consumers, or pay, period. It's less common, but it's shown up around here once or twice.
Option 3: Amazon.
And then we come to the big one. Actually selling stuff online.
Can’t be done with fanfics. Not legally. Must be original, barring some exceptions that have the legal side squared out.
Free market. Supply and demand. No bosses but you, no one telling you how to write your story, as long as it doesn’t involve Bigfoot raping campers.
Downsides? You’re paid per sold unit.
Write a flop on FimFiction and at worst you’ll get very little attention. Write a flop on Amazon.com and it’ll affect your livelihood. Actual livelihood, one you can live off of, allegedly, doesn’t become viable until after a year or so and a couple dozen works. Being prolific isn’t even the half of it.
The better you try to do it, the more you’re likely to be needing outside help, which means investing into an uncertain endeavour. That, or do it all on your own and you risk disastrous failure. You need to know the market. You need to get fans. Social media are optional, but recommended. And it’s all at your own pace.
Oh, and it’s all run by a company entity that can pull the plug on you whenever it feels like. But hey, that’s true for YouTube, too, and it doesn’t stop people from going pro on that.
So there’s some quick thoughts on how to go from hobbyist/fanfic writer to paid writer. Long story short, my New Year’s resolution to finish and publish at least one story on Amazon stands, the other two are not for me, for various reasons. But whether it’ll make a difference is another matter entirely.
The other resolutions? Redoing the hind legs on the Synfig thing, no significant progress on the health angle, sticking very well to my schedule for the most part. Last one… dubious at best. I did say it was an anniversary.
I'd recommend reading Stephen King's - 'On Writing'.
It's not really about making profit, but since the book is an autobiography of one of the most successful writers alive, it has some pretty good advice regarding writing in general, including how to make money.
Paetron is close to a tip jar. Yes, the people who pay more get more influence on you but it is in ways you outline when setting up the account. So it's really just offering a menu, some services higher priced than others, and letting your fans decide how much they want to pay. As with all crowdfunding it's a bit of a roll of the dice.
Amazon can pull the plug on you, yes, but so can anyone else you distribute a book through. Though if you do go the ebook route you shouldn't stick to just amazon anyway. There are several other places to publish ebooks so you don't depend on any one of them. Numbers seem to indicate Amazon is still the biggest at the moment, in the USA anyway.
The core thing to remember when making a living at writing is that it takes a long time of working at it. So saying "I want to make a living as a writer' and then working at it for years before even having a chance to break even on bills. Unless you get the luck break, but never should count on that. Though if you can keep my a steady output I think it's doable. I've got three short stories up on Amazon as ebooks, I do no real marketing, and I still get about one sale a month. Which is teeny-tiny money not worth mentioning except that I think that if I managed to have a steady output, maybe a short story and month and a novel every year or two, that it would add up after a while.
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Thanks for that clarification. This is just an attempt to get the facts straight on some of the matters at play. I've read about people cranking out short stories like that, it sounds like hard work, but feasible, at least. It's not a pipe dream, I mean. Main issue would be doing it while still getting a day job, I suppose, especially when you take taxes into account.
1. Offering to do commissioned work goes directly counter the spirit of fanfiction, since fanfiction is defined as "not for profit", and invites Hasbro to eventually send us all a Cease & Desist.
2. A Patreon tip jar is legal, and you could indeed ask for tips. Whether or not it becomes a real income is anybody's guess, though.
3. Going pro (selling original fiction) is indeed the safest bet, legally. But I would rather focus on selling to an editor rather than trying to sell straight to the customer.
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Well, fanfiction is obviously a tricky business with commissions, but there's also more generic fandom commissions, like in the furry fandom. No one owns that, so it's still legal. Even hypnotic transformation scripts can be legally made and sold... except in my country, oddly enough