Can You Make Money Writing Novels?

Can anyone write novels?

There are no educational or social requirements to becoming a novelist. Education helps you develop writing skills and get involved in the community of writing, but it is not a requirement for success. The main requirement is that you write a novel. The better written and more marketable your novel is, the better your chances. In the end, the elements that lead to the successful marketing of a novel have little to do with educational or social background.

What types of novels sell well?

Genre novels tend to be the easiest to market. There is a built-in audience for genres such as romance, horror, children, mystery, science fiction, fantasy and thriller. A new genre, chick-lit, in which the protagonist is a modern single woman experiencing relationship and career issues, is currently popular. Novels that fall outside of these genres aren’t necessarily doomed, but they are harder to market, and most major publishing houses are looking to publish novels that they are confident they can sell in great numbers.

How do I find a publisher?

There are many small and mid-sized publishers who are open to new writers. The problem with smaller publishers is that they don’t have the money and clout of a major publisher. Typically they will publish a print run of about 5000 books and try to sell those before they print more copies. Your chances of getting published with a smaller publisher is better (though you are still competing against many other novelists) but few of them can bring you the royalties required to make a living. Major publishers are the ones that can bring you big sales. It is harder to get a major publisher to notice you, but it isn’t impossible.

Typically a writer is represented by a literary agent. An agent is someone who has read your book and believes that the book is marketable enough for them to sell it to a publisher. They take advantage of whatever connections they have in the publishing industry to get your book read by acquiring editors, who decide what books their publishing company should publish. The acquiring editor then makes a proposal to their board of editors (or whoever else has final authority) and if all goes well you get your book published.

How many novels do I have to sell to make money?

Here is where you run into trouble. While there are many, many variables involved in how much a writer makes when his or her novel is published, a good rule of thumb for estimating your profits is a dollar a book. That means that you would have to sell 50,000 books a year in order to earn a solid living. While there are some people who publish multiple books a year, the typical novelist manages to produce a single book a year, so you would have to sell 50,000 copies of each book you publish, assuming that you find a publisher for your books.

While the Stephen Kings and J.K. Rowlings of this world have no trouble selling millions of books, the typical novel sells about 5000 to 10,000 copies. Less than ten percent of published novelists manage to sell 50,000 copies or more of their book, and selling 50,000 copies of a book in no way guarantees that you will find a publisher for your next book. Major publishers are looking for big wins. They want to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, and they are going to stick with the writers they think will deliver them those numbers. Keep in mind as well, that the delay between having a book accepted for publication and getting that book published is generally about two years and often longer. That is a long time to wait to see profits from a book.

Are there other ways for novelists to make money?

Many novelists hold full-time jobs in publishing or education. These jobs provide their main income. Novelists can make some money by giving readings or getting paid to attend writer’s conferences. A novel can also get sold to a movie studio. Whether the novel gets made into a movie or not, the novelist gets paid a certain amount. If the novel becomes a successful movie, the novelist is usually in a much better position to get their next novel published.

Can I self publish?

Self-publishing is an option for people who want to get their novel read, but the option seldom leads to substantial profits. The upside of self-publishing is that you can make much more per book than if someone else publishes your work. The downside is that all of the risks and all of the expenses are on your shoulders. That means that you have to find a way to sell enough copies of your book to make back your initial investment and then to make a profit. This is possible, but it is a lot of hard work. Keep in mind that the time you spend trying to publish and sell your novel must be subtracted from the amount of time you have available to write your next novel.

I’m sad now, can you cheer me up?

While the prospects of making a living as a novelist aren’t good, there are some people out there who manage to do it. A few people even manage to get quite wealthy. I recommend that you write novels if it is something you enjoy doing and if you want to produce something you can be proud of. Those are excellent reasons to write novels. By all means, once you produce a novel you are proud of, send it out into the world and try to find a publisher. Maybe you’ll strike it rich and maybe you won’t. At minimum you’ll have written a novel, and that is something to feel good about.

Maintaining your Novel’s Pace-Time Continuum

Hours, days, months or years

While it is possible to write one, I have never personally read a novel in which the events took place in a matter of minutes, but I have read novels in which the action took place over several hours or a couple of days. Franny and Zoey, the novella by J.D. Salinger, is comprised of two events that happen over the course of a few hours. Bright Lights, Big City takes place over the span of about three days. The World According To Garp is a novel that spans the entire life of the main character, T.S. Garp, moving from the events of his birth all the way through his life and his death, followed by a descriptions of the remaining lives of just about every character in the story.

Pick a Pace

The way you teat time in your story should have a fairly consistent approach. For example, if you write one scene in great detail, with each moment discussed at length, then you should consider that approach for most of your scenes. It would be odd to have a scene written to that level of detail followed by scenes that happen much faster and are far less descriptive. There might be reasons why you would make that choice, but for the most part you want the pace of your novel to say fairly steady unless there is a specific result that you want to achieve by changing the pace.

Jump With Care

Moving forward and backwards in time is also a tool that should be used with great care. A flashback can add value and perspective to a story, but it can also jar the person out of the narrative or leave them confused about the sequence of events. Sometimes, for the sake of continuity, it is better for a character to discuss the past events than for there to be an actual shift in time. It a choice that should be made carefully.

Watch Your Place

Be careful when it comes to the sequencing of events. If your story is supposed to take place over the course of a week, for example, be sure that the events could logically happen in that time frame. Also, especially if you write your novel out of sequence, make sure that when the finished product comes together, everything happens when it is supposed to.

How Setting Influences Story

Most good stories are very heavily influenced by their settings. Consider this simple story setup. A young couple has just gotten married. At the reception, the bridesmaid reveals that she and the best man had drunken fling the night before the wedding. As they head off on their honeymoon together, the bride and the groom must work through this crisis or their marriage will end before it has truly even begun.

This is a story that could happen virtually anywhere, and at almost any time in history. It could be a comedy, melodrama or tragedy. All of the elements are there for any sort of story you can imagine. The overt crisis (though not the underlying conflict) is clear and the stakes are equally clear. Consider though, the effect that setting would have on this story.

Setting #1: 2008. The wedding took place at a posh hotel in Chicago, The bride and groom now face a long plane rise to Hawaii, where they have secured a small villa right on the beach. While they are in Hawaii they are scheduled to attend a luau, an island tour and snorkeling in a private lagoon.

Setting #2: 1988. The couple were married at a Las Vegas chapel by an Elvis impersonator. The reception was held at the Circus Circus hotel buffet, which is the hotel they will be staying at, surrounded by their family and friends, for the next several days. They have tickets to see Rich Little and have booked a helicopter tour of the Las Vegas Strip.

Setting #3: 1954. Rural Virginia. The couple were married in a large church wedding with the reception at the Elk’s Lodge. For their honeymoon they are driving down to a small motel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Their car is a ten-year old Cadillac.

Obviously these are rudimentary setting details, but I think you can get an idea that the three different settings lend themselves to dramatically different effects. A posh villa in Hawaii will influence the characters much differently than a garish casino or a small-town motel. The morals and general atmosphere of the 1950s, the 1980s and the 2000s are very different. The economics of the three settings are also dramatically different. The feeling of being surrounded by family or being isolated during a crisis has influences the characters.

The setting can either have a weak or a strong influence on the plot and the themes of a story, depending on how the writer uses it. Here are a few ideas for choosing your settings:

• Choose settings that matter to the characters
• Choose settings that can influence the action
• Choose settings that you know enough about to describe comfortably
• Choose settings that will be of interest to the readers
• Take the time to describe the settings in enough detail for the readers to have a clear idea of where the characters are

What to Do Once the Crisis is Settled

Is this the End?

Every story has to end. The most important thing that has to happen before a story ends is that the central conflict of the story has to be settled. The protagonist wins. The protagonist loses. The protagonist realizes that she has both won and lost. Whatever the case, the crisis is settled. What then?

Say a Little or Say a Lot?

In movies, you frequently see them end the story at the moment, the very moment, when the central conflict has been settled. Sports movies are famous for this. The Karate Kid ends just after Daniel has defeated his nemesis Johnny to win the karate championship. He is literally still standing there with his arms in the air as his instructor Miyagi looks on with pride. There is no denouement whatsoever. It ends at the moment of triumph.

On the other end of the scale you have the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (both the books and the movies). It can be argued that half the final book (and movie) are denouement. We see how the conflict has changed each of the central characters and we follow them as they return to their former lives or find that they cannot return to their former lives. The World According to Garp (the book, I never saw the movie) actually takes the time to follow each of their characters all the way to their various eventual deaths. It tells you how their lives played out in the aftermath of the central crisis.

All of these choices are valid, but there are definitely consequences to each choice. A brief, or nonexistent, denouement runs the risk of the reader not really feeling that the central conflict had a significant effect on the characters. They may end up feeling as if their time has been wasted or feel that the characters haven’t really changed. An especially long denouement, by contrast, runs the risk of leaving the reader bored. Once the tension of the crisis has been released, the reader knows that the conclusion is coming. The longer you take with the denouement, the longer you will have to keep the reader’s attention without having the tension of the conflict to keep them invested.

Be Fair to your Readers

One of the most controversial denouements is the end of the Harry Potter series of books. Because the series lasted seven books, the readers were invested in many, many characters. People wanted to know how all of these characters turned out. What readers got was a twenty page denouement, set years later, that answered very few of the lingering questions. This upset most readers — quite understandably. When you spend several thousand pages discussing the lives of a set of characters, you should expect that the readers will be invested in the outcomes for each of these characters that they have grown to love over the years.

My simple advice is that a denouement should last long enough for the reader to feel satisfied, but no so long that the reader gets bored. Make sure that the central themes of your novel get at least a moment of reflection in the denouement and that your readers are clear about how the novel has changed your characters.

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