business of writing

An ode to days when writers were paid to write.

In our last episode, I noted how much the writing world had changed since Anne Lamott first published Bird by Bird, in which she described receiving advance money on an unwritten novel, including additional funds released after she submitted two failed drafts.

A hundred years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald supported a lavish lifestyle with income from his writing, the majority of which came from his short fiction rather than his novels and screenplays. Fitzgerald was reportedly paid as much as $4,000 for a short story, or about $70,000 in today’s money. In 1925, he earned $2,000 from a single short story, more than he earned in royalties from the first year of sales of The Great Gatsby.

In an entry in her Diaries and Notebooks, Patricia Highsmith recorded a few early sales of short stories. She earned $800 per story, or the equivalent of about $14,000 today. Earlier in her diaries, she mentions paying about $50 per month in rent. So the sale of one short story per year was sufficient to pay rent on a small apartment in New York City, with money to spare for utilities and telephone. I didn’t crunch the numbers, but a second short story was probably enough pay for food and a reasonable clothing and entertainment allowance.

That’s a far cry from $4,000, but bear in mind these were Highsmith’s first significant sales. She wasn’t yet the author of Strangers on a Train or The Talented Mr. Ripley. She was 25-year old comic book writer Pat Highsmith of New York, paying a year’s rent with one story.

Outside of the New Yorker or perhaps Harper’s, paying markets for fiction today are going to tap out around that 1947-era $800 bucks, if you’re lucky to get that high. A long story in the New Yorker might get you that $14,000, but only if you come with credentials. And even that won’t pay a year’s rent in New York City.

A million years ago, when I started submitting short fiction, most markets paid in comp copies, and a few paid $50 to $150. There were more top tier markets, like Playboy and The Atlantic, but unless your name was Kurt Vonnegut or Joyce Carol Oates, you weren’t catching those paydays.

As usual, I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

On Saturday, November 15, I’ll be joining a dozen other expert authors at the Manor Mill Writers Retreat, where we’ll discuss questions about craft, publishing, and platform. Local writers can expect a welcoming, casual environment and lively discussion with peers.

Where and When

Manor Mill is a newly restored historic grist mill and miller’s house in Monkton, Maryland, located in northern Baltimore County. This scenic setting has been repurposed into a creative hub for writers and artists, featuring classes, workshops, writers’ gatherings, theater and music performances, and a fine art gallery.

The Mill’s events for writers include a monthly write-in, poetry workshops, poetry and prose readings and open mic nights, songwriter meetups, and opportunities for playwrights to connect to the local theater community.

The 2^nd Annual Writers Retreat will be held on November 15, 2025, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

What

I will be speaking on two panels.

DEMYSTIFYING AI: FRIEND, FOE…OR A FORCE YOU CAN USE?

AI: one can barely blink without hearing the term! Love it or fear it, artificial intelligence is here to stay—and whether or not you use AI tools directly, they’re likely influencing your daily life in surprising ways. Chances are you’re already interacting with it more than you realize.

From brainstorming and drafting to editing and publishing, artificial intelligence is quietly becoming part of the writing toolkit. In this conversation, editor and publisher Will Remains and novelist Katie Aiken Ritter will discuss things AI can do for you, including some practical examples and important ethical considerations.

BUILDING YOUR PLATFORM: SUBSTACK 101

Substack: you keep hearing about it, but what is it, really? This fast-growing platform blends blogging, newsletters, and podcasts, giving writers a simple, powerful way to share their work and connect with readers.

But is it right for you? Building an audience can feel daunting, especially with so many platforms competing for attention. Editor and publisher Will Remains and fantasy author Emily Parks will introduce you to Substack and walk you through the basics: creating a Substack account and profile, doing first posts, setting up an email newsletter, using graphics, and social connections. Grow your community!

Hope to see you there!

PS – I dropped a deadline last week. Did you miss me?

Once you’ve narrowed down your list of tasks associated with the business of writing, you might find yourself wondering what tools to use and how to keep track of it all.

Here’s my tech stack:

Writing: MS Word

I almost feel like a luddite admitting that I use MS Word, rather than Scrivener or a similar writing app. I’ve tried Scrivener. I don’t have anything negative to say about it, but it didn’t work with my writing process, which looks something like this:

I like the One Stop for Writers site, from the people who create the Writers Helping Writers blog. One Stop is built to help you organize long-form work into chapters, scenes, and beats, and lets you create separate folders for characters, settings, etc. The site is also directly attached to the publishers’ writing resources, including multiple thesauruses and craft advice. If you’re looking for an organization tool, I recommend checking it out. Wait for a sale. You can usually get a six month membership at a decently discounted rate.

Graphics: Pixabay, various public domain sites, Affinity Photo

I can usually find a decent royalty-free photo on Pixabay. There are other good sites, but I happen to like that one. I also liberally steal borrow images from film and television if they fit my topic. That’s like free advertising, right?

If you want to disappear down a research hole, here are some non-Wikipedia sites with literally millions of public domain images:

• • Database of Old Book Illustrations
  • British Library
  • Paris Musées (a passing knowledge of French helps here)
  • New York Public Library Digital Collections
  • Library of Congress
  • Getty Museum
  • Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive
  • Van Gogh Museum
  • University of California

Don’t say I never gave you anything.

To edit graphics, I use Affinity Photo, part of the Affinity suite of creative apps. Apparently, it compares favorably to Photoshop, but I wouldn’t know anything about that, because my skills are limited to cropping and resizing. It is also significantly less expensive than Adobe products, so if you are considering purchasing any creative apps and don’t need the highest high-end software, the Affinity package is a very good buy.

Just about everyone I know migrated to Affinity when Adobe issued a license agreement that, under the right microscope, gave them certain rights to anything created with one of their apps. Probably an AI training thing. They retracted it almost immediately, but the damage was done.

Website: WordPress

Easy to set up, short learning curve for basic theme design and posting, flexible enough to accommodate users who put in the effort or are willing to pay someone for bells and whistles.

Alternative: Substack.

I recently added Substack, based on some professional advice about “discoverability.” Built more like a social media app, Substack allows you post into the news stream, where people who don’t know you might stumble across one of your posts. For now, the account simply mirrors my WordPress blog. I’ll keep both for now.

Substack offers less flexibility on design and color, but provides a built-in newsletter function and auto-optimizes post images for various social media. It probably does other things, but I haven’t investigated fully.

Newsletter: Beehiiv

There are a lot of options out there for free or very low cost email newsletter platforms. Costs are generally tiered to your number of subscribers, and most include various add-on features. I chose Beehiiv because Warren Ellis uses it. Ellis is a comics writer and a slut for new tech and apps, so if he adopts one, that’s usually a good sign that it’s worth the trouble. The free tier runs to 2,500 subscribers, which is more generous than many platforms. The interface is drag and drop and fairly intuitive.

Had I known I would start a Substack, I might not have launched the newsletter on Beehiiv, but now that I’m using it, I like it.

Social Media: Yes

Whether to have social media accounts, how many, and how to use them are questions of individual preference. The best advice I’ve read on social media is to pick one or two that you enjoy using and ignore the rest. Don’t get bogged down figuring out which is the best for writers or book sales. Even if you guess right, it will change.

Today, I’m on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and Bluesky. I don’t use any of them to great extent, but I post on FB and Bluesky more often, which isn’t saying much, because I post on X and Insta exactly zero. I didn’t want Bluesky at all, but most of the writing community hightailed it over there due to current events, so I signed up. Bluesky is basically X, but with ridiculous left-wing assholes instead of ridiculous right-wing assholes.

Productivity: Motion, Fedica, Publer

My brain runs fine, thank you very much, but it doesn’t always take the most direct route to my destination. I have some bad habits, like overcommitting, forgetting appointments or errands, and being indecisive about what to tackle next. I’ve tried calendar alerts, habit apps, spreadsheets, reward systems – none of them worked well or for very long. But this AI-lite app has been very beneficial.

Technically an office productivity app, Motion allows you to schedule tasks and events, set durations and deadlines, flag priorities, and create multiple schedules. You can create one-time tasks or recurring tasks that will automatically schedule daily, weekly, or monthly based on your settings. The app uses AI to schedule your tasks around your events, prioritizing what you marked as high priority. As you mark tasks as complete, it reshuffles, moving items with approaching deadlines to earlier dates and times. It red-flags anything about to miss a deadline.

I benefit from having a visual representation of my upcoming calendar that I can review every Sunday evening. Occasionally, I will have weeks were almost every minute is scheduled (such as when I try to do everything a writer should be doing…) Even if I could technically fit in everything I’d like to accomplish, I realize that’s not feasible. I like that I can make choices and adjustments well before it’s necessary. I also like that Motion resorts my tasks without my needing to do anything.

It’s not cheap – the annual subscription works out to about $20 a month – but for me, it’s money well spent.

And, because I “should be” more visible on various social media, I’ve also opened accounts with service apps that cross post to various platforms. Fedica and Publer offer free accounts, but limit the number of social accounts and posts you can make. I don’t have that many or post that often, so that works for me. Caveat: Setting up FB, X, and Bluesky wasn’t too difficult, but I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get Instagram working properly. Publer only works on “professional” accounts, so you need an FB business page, plus an Instagram creator or business page, and they have to be linked <insert eye roll emoji here>. This was another tedious chore I handed off to ChatGPT. It couldn’t do the work for me, but it broke down the multiple steps across platforms.

There’s the short version of the tech stack. I probably left something out. And yes, I felt youthful and cutting edge calling it a “tech stack”.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

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Do you want to make money – any amount of money – from your writing or other creative work? Being creative is the least of your worries, and if you’re not careful, you might find that your creative work is where you devote the least amount of your time.

A sample list of everything a writer “should” be doing to create a business around their work probably includes:

• Blogging or having a robust daily social media presence
• Publishing short work or articles to keep your name out there
• Speaking engagements – panel discussions, craft talks, book readings
• Getting professional headshots
• Maximizing your bio
• Attending conferences and workshops
• Literary citizenship – helping other writers by sharing their social media posts, reviewing their books, etc.
• Commenting on other people’s blogs or socials
• Responding to comments on your blog or socials
• Exchanging critiques
• Creating and maintaining a website (which has its own lengthy list of tasks)
• Creating and maintaining a newsletter (ditto)
• Setting up a business – getting a license; organizing your finances, receipts, and taxes; registering your business name; copyrighting or trademarking your writer and/or business name
• For traditional publishing:
  • Researching agents, publishers, and magazines
  • Monitoring trends
  • Querying and submitting
  • Staying abreast of rip-offs
• For self-publishing:
  • Designing books
  • Finding cover artists
  • Choosing a printer
  • Studying best practices, success stories, and big fails
  • Finding the money to pay for it
  • Selling the books

And don’t forget: writing the next book.

And that’s all before you even publish the book. Getting a book into print starts a new cycle of publicity, marketing, event coordination, book store outreach. Selling the book is a third full-time job on top of writing the book in the first place and creating an author brand.

What can you do? 

I have often looked at the above list – which is nowhere near comprehensive – and let loose with a hearty “Fuck this.” It’s simply overwhelming, and there’s no roadmap. There’s no logical order, suggesting that you should focus on Task A and B first, and then worry about C and D in six months or a year. Even experts can’t pare down the list to a top three, not when accounting for any kind of business or career element. They all agree the book comes first, but second place belongs to networking…and your website…and critiquing…and publishing short work…and engaging on social and…

Sophie had an easier time choosing.

Frankly, unless you are already financially independent – or are a stupendously obnoxious Type A – you simply can’t do it all. Even someone who can treat writing as their full-time job couldn’t do it all in 40 hours. Choices must be made.

I’m old enough to remember when the blueprint was Write > Critique > Submit. That’s all you had to do. Publicity was for writers who were already published.

I wish I could do it all. There are parts of the gig I miss – having a table at cons and book fairs, for example, or going to conferences and workshops.  Unfortunately, events are time consuming and expensive. Without a current book, book fairs aren’t a good use of my resources. Conferences also can be hit or miss, in quality of both speakers and attendees.

There are other things on the list I would like to do but have had difficulty launching. Critiquing and having a writing group is at the top. I’ve tried several online critique sites and while they seem well run, I find virtual critiquing antiseptic. I crave the community as much as the critique, even if the facetime is over Zoom. And while I’d like to believe I’m generous enough to critique work without expecting someone to return the favor, that’s a factor as well. Commitment matters.

So, you pick and choose. My priorities?

The musts:

1. Writing the book

Personal commitments:

1. Posting on the blog every Monday and Thursday
2. Sending my monthly newsletter on the first Sunday of every month
3. Weekly meetup for silent writing time

Things that usually get done, but can slip:

1. Posting on social media
2. Contributing to conversations on socials, blogs, etc.
3. Check email

What I’d like to make time for:

1. Critique group
2. Occasional conferences and workshops

That’s a hell of a list, even after I “cut back” to what I consider the necessities. Writing, blogging, and nurturing a bit of community are all significant time commitments, and that’s before considering whether travel time is involved.

Still, there are a lot of things that a writer “should” do that I can happily ignore for a bit:

Tasks without deadlines:

1. Refresh the website
2. Refresh the social branding
3. Serious networking

Things that can wait until after the book is near or completely finished:

1. Book layout and cover design
2. Researching comps
3. Anything that costs more than $100
4. Any business question
5. Any publishing question

What might wait until I’m retired:

1. Podcast

It grinds my gears that I don’t have time for a podcast, but even a short monthly conversation would require 12 – 15 hours to properly plan, write, record, edit, and post, and that’s not considering any effort to promote it. Heavy sigh.

How do you choose? Other than your writing, what activities do you engage in? I know some of you aren’t chasing the business side, which probably means you are smarter than I am. Are there other non-writing writing activities you make time for?

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

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Forgive another post about branding and platforming. I’m on a kick, but I’ll bring it round to writing.

I’ve noted my general aversion to terms like branding and platform. I’ve no ambition to become McDonald’s or Nike, and I’m uncomfortable at the dais. The spotlight sounds like fun until it hits you.

Nonetheless, the concepts have value. They merely need reframing. I prefer terms like community, communicating, and identity, but the tools of branding and platform can be used to build these as well.

Viewed in a less corporate way, branding is merely the assertion of your authentic self, but with a louder voice. Platform doesn’t have to mean an elevated spot for a single speaker; it can be a dance floor for hundreds. Consider branding as an invitation. If you like what you see, come on in.

In essence, branding is simply the writer telling one more story, the story of himself. “Who am I” is both the question and the answer.

That equation is a bit more difficult for some of us than others.

The “who am I” statement came up during Jane Friedman’s business workshop a few weeks ago. Attendees were asked to create a branding statement of no more than two sentences, twenty-five to thirty words, with one sentence being better.

Most of the table had an easier time narrowing down their focus, whether that might be genre (series murder mystery); market niche (YA science fiction); or non-fiction topic (mental health, grief). For those of us – me – who follow stories and characters where they lead regardless of genre, crafting a single statement was harder.

How does one sum that up? I felt a bit like the odd man out at the table, but the writers I admire also don’t fit into a 25-word purpose statement. Margaret Atwood, Alan Moore, Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler, Dave Eggers, China Miéville, and Marge Piercy aren’t confined to any one genre. Neither are Stanley Kubrick or Steven Spielberg. How do you describe a man who directed 2001, Full Metal Jacket, and The Shining or the one who directed Jaws, Lincoln, and West Side Story? Of course, I’m not in that stratosphere, but if I’m going to sit at someone’s feet, I want the best view.

Even writers known for specific genres branched out into romance (Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt), alternative history (Philip Roth, The Plot Against America), or semi-autobiographical fiction (Philip K. Dick, Confessions of a Crap Artist, which is, ironically, my favorite of his books).

And what about those of us who cram our genres together like chocolate and peanut butter and occasionally jam or a banana? We like a bit of horror in our romance and  magic in our murder mystery and fantasy is our historical novels. Alien? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Game of Thrones?

“My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.”  ― Alan Moore

Currently, I’m actively writing one fantasy novel and am outlining a follow-up set in the same world but with different characters. After that? Well, my 2026 project is probably a faith-based contemporary novel, and then a 1930s rural murder mystery. Then I might work on a science fiction romance set in the multiverse or a 1960s small town marriage drama. I have a great premise for a road trip horror novel and another for a coming-of-age ghost story. I could jump on a Victorian-era SF novel or a series of grand guignol plays I’m toying with.

Branding would be a lot easier if I wrote YA romance or a detective series or whatever Twilight/Game of Thrones rip-off is popular this week, but what’s easy isn’t always what’s fun. And frankly, it wouldn’t be easy for me, because I’d hate every minute of it.

Fortunately, Jane had good advice about focusing on tone and experience, if genre or market niche aren’t as relevant. I can work with attitude, and I clearly have recurring themes – you might call them personal issues – I work out in my writing. This is probably a good place to refer back to my post on the Writer’s Credo. If you can’t pinpoint what genre you write, at minimum, you should be able to tell your reader what you believe.

So what do I write?

I write caustic tales of misfits, loners, and misanthropes. Multiple genres, many sins, leavened with dark humor and the kind of hope that leaves a scar.

Sound good? Come on in.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

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