{"id":259,"date":"2020-02-28T15:47:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T15:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/honeyrand.com\/staging\/3053\/?p=259"},"modified":"2024-06-09T19:16:28","modified_gmt":"2024-06-09T19:16:28","slug":"so-you-want-to-be-a-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/honeyrand.com\/staging\/3053\/2020\/02\/28\/so-you-want-to-be-a-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"So, you want to be a writer…."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be writers. <\/strong>That\u2019s the grim takeaway<\/strong><\/a> from a report issued by the Authors Guild<\/strong><\/a>. Incomes earned by writing have dropped 24 percent since 2013, and half of all full-time authors earn less than the federal poverty level of $12,488. \u201cThe days of authors supporting themselves from writing may be coming to an end,\u201d says Christine Larson, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Colorado who wrote the study. She contends that the 20th century was a rare historical era in which a relatively large number of people \u2014 including women and people of color \u2014 enjoyed success as writers. Those halcyon days are over. The closure of thousands of newspapers, magazines and websites leaves fewer places for writers to place their work. And ebooks \u2014 sold mostly by Amazon \u2014 earn less revenue than print books. Bestselling writers are surviving fine, but the real victims in this new economy are midlist literary authors, who are seeing their livelihoods evaporate. For instance, Katharine Weber, the author of seven well-received books, speaks candidly in the report about what that means. Back in the day, Weber used to earn six-figure advances; her most recent novel brought $2,000. \u201cI feel I\u2019m at the end of a tradition, the last of my kind,\u201d she says. To slow or even reverse this trend, Larson recommends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n