Books & rights
Serialisation and extracts
A newspaper or magazine pays to run a piece of the book — and tells a million people it exists.
Needs a bookSolid ceilingLess obvious
Read the route
A field guide · by Stewart Ferris
How writers earn
Most writers still picture a straight line: write a book, find a publisher, collect royalties. Royalties matter. They are also, for the majority of working writers, a fraction of the picture.
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Translation rights, audio, festival fees, school visits, a YouTube channel built on the same research as the novel, a day of copywriting that pays more than a year’s midlist paperback royalties — these are not “side hustles” in the Instagram sense. They are how writers have always paid the rent.
I have been on both sides of the contract: as the author of more than fifty books, and as a publisher since 1990. This site is a map of the routes I have used, sold, bought, and watched other writers live on — written for people who want the work of writing to be a living as well as a calling.
— Stewart Ferris
Contents
Eight ways into the ledger
01
Books & rights
The traditional path: advances, royalties, and everything a contract can sell besides the book itself.
02
Self-publishing
You keep the rights, the risk, and a much larger slice of each sale. The marketing is also yours.
03
Appearances
Festivals, schools, libraries, after-dinners. The book gets you in the room; the fee is for turning up.
04
Teaching & coaching
Workshops, university seminars, mentoring. Writers have taught other writers for as long as there have been writers.
05
Commissioned writing
Someone else has the idea, the deadline, and the budget. You bring the sentences.
06
Digital & audience
YouTube, newsletters, courses, podcasts. The writing is the bait; the audience is the asset.
07
Collecting, prizes & grants
Money that arrives because a book was borrowed, photocopied, awarded, or funded — if you remembered to register.
08
Adjacent skills
Editing, judging, consulting. The craft, sold by the hour rather than by the copy.
The less obvious
Money that does not look like a royalty statement
School visits, collecting societies, ghostwriting, a newsletter, judging a prize. None of these require you to pretend you are a startup. They require you to notice that the skill travels.
Books & rights
Book clubs, large print and special editions
The same text, reset for a different reader — and licensed again.
Needs a bookModest ceilingLess obvious
Read the route
Self-publishing
Kindle Unlimited and subscription reading
Paid by the page-read rather than the purchase — a library card with a royalty pool.
No book requiredUncappedLess obvious
Read the route
Self-publishing
Direct sales from your own shop
The customer pays you. You keep the customer.
Needs an audienceUncappedLess obvious
Read the route
Self-publishing
Crowdfunding a book
Readers pay to bring the book into existence, in advance, in public.
Needs an audienceSolid ceilingLess obvious
Read the route
Appearances
School and library visits
A day's work, a room of readers who have not yet learned to be jaded, and a fee that is not a royalty statement.
Needs a bookSolid ceilingLess obvious
Read the route
Two cheques people forget
PLR and ALCS
If you have a published book in the UK and you have not registered for Public Lending Right and joined ALCS, you are leaving money on a table that was set for you. Library loans and photocopying are work. The schemes exist so that work is paid.
The author of this guide
Stewart Ferris writes books, scripts and the occasional hired sentence — and used to publish other people’s.
Author of How to be a Writer and How to Get Published, the Ballashiels Mysteries, and more than fifty other books, translated into a dozen languages. Writing for television, radio, Pokémon, and a Ricky Gervais theme song along the way.