How to go from being a part-time author to a career author

You may be aware that becoming a full-time career author is no easy feat. It is often a difficult decision to take the leap and pursue writing full-time. The question remains then: how can you turn this passion into a profit?

Common types of income for authors  ​

To understand the ways that people make money from a writing career, it’s best to split the main methods of generating income into two categories: writing-based and marketing-based.
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Writing-based income:  

• Royalties  
• Advances (if you are pursuing traditional publishing)   

 
Marketing-based income:  

• Social media engagement  
• Guest appearances and interviews  
• Variety of book formats (e.g. audiobooks and eBooks) 
• Merchandise and branding (maybe you sell tote bags with quotes from your books on them or have a brand sponsor for your social media channels)   

 
By branching out the ways in which you earn your income from writing, you are more likely to earn a stable income than if you only relied on book sales alone.

Breaking it down into monetary value ​

​Royalties: 
Royalties are the percentage of a book’s sale price that authors are entitled to via their contract with a publisher. At Rowanvale, the typical rate for royalties is 65%. For example, if you were to publish a book with Rowanvale and charge a market price of £8.99 for it, you would receive £5.84 on each sale. If you were to sell 1,000 copies of your book in a year, you would receive £5,840 that year in royalties (before tax).

Social media: 
The income from social media varies greatly, both on different platforms and between different accounts. It is difficult to calculate exact amounts of money that can be made through social media, but a lot of the money made through social media is due to brand sponsorship or affiliate links. Additionally, by creating an author website you can string together links to a Patreon account and all your social media pages, as well as places to purchase your books, all into one place. 

Summary of some helpful tips for becoming a career author  ​

• Branch out and have multiple ways of generating income that relate to your work. This could be through social media engagement, content creation such as podcasts, newsletters and much more.  
• Market, market, market. Make sure that your work is getting noticed. If your book sales are low, marketing can be an effective way to increase interest and sales.  
• Changing format. Having your work available in a variety of formats (audiobooks and eBooks) is a great way to sell more books and reach different markets.  
• Be productive. Finally, the most basic way to create a stable income is to produce work regularly. Having new books published not only increases sales due to having multiple works in the market, but often generates interest on your older books. It is often said that frontlists sell backlists, so get those frontlists going! 

  
Although many people create authorial careers, the way they do this varies and not every path suits everyone. If being a career author is something that you dream of, however, utilising some of the tips and ideas put forward in this article may be a good starting point. ​