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I love writing for kids and working with them. But I have never (at least not as an adult) had any illusions that I could support myself working solely as a writer. This "Ah-Ha!" moment came during a banquet while I in library school, (as we called it back in the day.)
I was graduate assistant to the children's services specialist. (Who knows where I'd be today if I assisted the specialists in government documents or cataloging?) He had put together an all-star children's literature symposium--Ellen Raskin, Ashley Bryant, Jean Fritz--award-winning authors and illustrators all. At the banquet, I was thrilled when my boss seated me next to the brilliant Ellen Raskin. The year before, her Figgs & Phantoms had been named a Newbery Honor book. Her own Newbery for The Westing Game would be three years in the future.
Always a big fan of Ms Raskin's funny, quirky books, I was thrilled to discover that the author was just like her books--funny, quirky and blunt. Too chicken to ask this Great Author anything more than to pass the salt, please, I listened as she answered the questions of our tablemates. I learned that she had a daughter, was married to an editor at
Scientific American and lived in a funny (quirky?) house on a private, gated street in Greenwich Village. Her studio on the top floor had a big skylight. (Odd the details the memory records.)
I was ready to chuck my previous career role model, Mary Tyler Moore, and move into Ellen Raskin's seemingly perfect life. Then someone asked "that question" which really wasn't a question.
"So, you must be doing pretty well with your books," said a person whose name and gender is lost in time.
Ms Raskin's fork clinked against her plate."That depends on how you define 'pretty well'," she replied.
"I mean financially," the Person said blandly, with a smile that assumed Ellen would answer, "Oh yes, I am making buckets of money." Young, dumb me, assumed that would be the answer too.
Ms Raskin paused, as if calculating something in her head. "Well," she said. "I have ten books in print."
Wow! I thought.
Ten books in print. She must be making a fortune. Three-story houses in Greenwich Village aren't cheap. The thought of anyone having
ten books in print at the same time was simply mind-boggling.
But Ellen was still talking. "...and last year I made..." and named a four digit figure. Even in 1976, it was a ridiculously low amount of money.
Ten books and this is all she made? She has a Newbery Honor book for crying out loud!Long silence at our table. After a moment, Ellen laughed and made a comment about writers needing employed spouses. Dinner went on, but that conversation was a wake-up call for me. Now I knew what people meant went they said, "Don't quit your day job." And I didn't for a long, long time.
Quitting my day job was not my choice. My husband's company transferred him to Thailand, a country with notoriously tough labor laws. I became a full-time writer, whether I wanted to or not. I wrote ten and twelve hours a day. I wrote and sold
My Best Friend and
Yankee Girl in those years.
Fast forward to today. I have written and published seven books, plus contributed to two YA short story anthologies.
My Best Friend won both the Ezra Jack Keats and Charlotte Zolotow Awards, and is referenced in many children's literature textbooks.
Yankee Girl was nominated for a dozen State Book Awards. I am extremely fortunate that all but one of these books is still in print. One,
Jimmy's Stars, is only available as an e-book. For someone who is considered a mid-list author, someone who is not J.K Rowling or Suzanne Collins or Rick Riordan, I am doing really well.
Last year, my royalties were half of what my daughter makes as a part-time waitress at Golden Corral. My very best year, royalty-wise, equalled my teaching salary when I left to get married. That was 1990, and I taught in one of the poorest school systems in my state. My very best year, in real money terms, was a lot less than my best year teaching.
Luckily, I enjoy doing school visits and teaching. However, in the last couple of years, school budgets and curriculum have rarely accommodated author visits. I pick up teaching/tutoring gigs here and there, mostly for homeschool groups. I've done freelance editing and worked as a private writing coach. My most reliable source of income is the Young Author's day camps I run each summer, with
weekend workshops during the school year.
 |
| One of my first school visits, Davis Elementary, Jackson, Ms |
In the beginning, my non-royalty "author jobs" income equalled my royalties. Now it surpasses it. I love working with these young writers. It's my dessert, after spending the rest of the year writing in solitude. I began with a single week camp. Now, ten years later, I conduct writing camps for the Parks Department and local historical societies nearly every week from Memorial Day to the start of school.
 |
| Young authors at work! Roswell, Ga, summer 2013. |
Sure, if I were still a school librarian, I'd be
making more money. I am super lucky to be married 25 years to my best friend, who has a good job and insurance. If my income dried up to zero, we would not be out in the streets. But I have always been a working mom. I love what I do. I can't imagine ever retiring.
Don't forget to sign up for our
latest Book Giveaway (click here) for info. Don't miss out; the deadline is October 10.
Posted by Mary Ann Rodman 
By:
Carmela Martino and 5 other authors,
on 10/2/2015
Blog:
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Howdy, Campers ~ and Happy Poetry Friday! My poem's below, as is the link to today's Poetry Friday round-up.
The topic we TeachingAuthors are knocking around this time is Making a Living as a Writer.
Carmela starts us off with a TeachingAuthors' Book Giveaway of the 2016 CWIM which includes two of her articles, once of which is aptly titled, Making a Living as a Writer; Esther addresses the many ways she's made writing pay...and other pay-offs that result, and our Wednesday Writing Workout, written by former TeachingAuthor Laura Purdie Salas, is titled Is Writing on Assignment Right for You?
So--what are my 3 Tips to Make a Living as a Writer?
1) Write a Classic.
2) Find a Secondary Occupation which actually pays.
3) Define Making a Living
(Hmm...maybe Define Making a Living should come first.)
 |
| from morguefile.com |
And now for a story about making money as a poet.
I've sold poems to anthologies, testing services and magazines. Between 1995 and 2011 I sold 30 poems to
Carus Publishing Company (publisher of
Cricket Magazine and many others). I'm going to brag here because it still makes me proud: in 2003 they asked me to write a poem for a progressive story in honor of the 30th anniversary of
Cricket.At the time, they paid $3 per line.
In 1997 I asked
John D. Allen, my
all-time favorite editor, if I might possibly be given a raise.
John's response: "As for $4.00 per line...well, I'm afraid we can't do that. Our policy is to keep the same pay scale for all poems. Sorry. I hope that's not too much of a problem."
Okay, I wrote. Could you give me a free subscription to
Cricket? My son was then eight years old.
He replied: "I wish I could offer you an author discount or a subscription credit against your sales, but I'm told I can't. We don't give out much of any discounts besides the early renewal one you checked on your form. And shifting author payments toward subscriptions would create some sort of accountant's nightmare around here. (Actually, that's all a lie. I was told I could offer you any sort of discount I wanted, as long as the difference came out of my salary. So I thought, Well, I could make April's life a little easier, and it wouldn't cost me much--probably just the price of the cinnamon Pop-Tarts I was planning to buy for an afternoon snack. But then, well, one thing led to another, and to make a long story short, the Pop-Tarts were delicious.)
I loved working with John. I loved seeing my poems in
BabyBug, Ladybug, Spider and
Cricket. I surrendered. Sort of.
In 1998, I responded to his suggestion that I cut a repeated stanza from a poem he'd accepted:
"I'm so glad you like the poem, "Music Critic"! I have enclosed the poem as it reads without the repetition and also another version to see if there might be some way we could keep the repetition in the poem. Do the new repeats make it any clearer for your readers? If not, I'd be glad to omit the second stanza. I do like the repetition and will probably re-insert it if it gets published again...but I also trust your judgment for your readers.
My husband Gary, who is a CPA (deep into Tax Season as I write this) asked me to ask you if you were going to pay me for the invisible stanza."
Here is the poem John critiqued--without the repetition:
MUSIC CRITIC
(THE OCEAN’S OPINION)
by April Halprin Wayland
This guy drags his drum set onto the sand
so that I have a front row seat
takes off his jeans jacket
snaps his wide red suspenders
and lets loose:
he is in his space
sun is on his face
gulls in the air
clouds in his hair
Go man, go!
I clap against the shore,
rise up and give him a standing ovation
More!
published in Cricket Magazine December 1999
© 2015 by April Halprin Wayland. Used with permission of the author, who controls all rights
This poem was subsequently awarded
SCBWI's 1999
Magazine Merit Award for Poetry. (You're right, John! I take it all back!)
* * *
If you haven't already done so, enter
our latest Book Giveaway of the 2016 Children's Writer's & Illustrators Market
posted with love by April Halprin Wayland, who just got home after a beautiful and challenging six mile hike in Malibu followed by an electric car adventure (long story)
Carmela’s Friday post not only announced our Book Giveaway of the Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market 2016 (Writer’s Digest), the details of which follow today’s post. It also highlighted her CWIM 2016 article “Make a Living as a Writer,” thus beginning our TeachingAuthors conversation about how we writers earn our keep doing what we love.
Money. That taboo $ubject we’re not $uppo$$ed to talk about.
Just Saturday, in a Small Session talk at the Chicago Writers Conference, I suggested writers keep their day jobs, especially if the job offers health insurance, and definitely if that health insurance includes dental coverage. “There are all sorts of currencies in this world,” I tell children’s book writer wannabe’s and my school visit questioners who always feel comfortable asking my income. I tap my heart and smile. “Money isn’t the only thing that keeps a person going.”
Which is not to say, I don’t get it – literally and figuratively! J
Like so many of my fellow children’s book creators, schools and libraries pay me to visit and speak.
Fortunately, though, my additional tools - I hold a B.S. in Elementary Education, ½ a Masters Degree in Curriculum Instruction and an Illinois Teaching Certificate, plus my additional experiences as both a classroom teacher and professional journalist have also paid off.
Take, for example, the year 2000.
The two picture books I’d recently sold had respective publishing dates of 2002 and 2005.
What’s a children’s book writer to do - besides write and do school and library visits?
I, for one, said “YES!” to any opportunity that came my way.
· I critiqued children’s book manuscripts, sharing everything I’d learned and offering everything I’d needed when learning my craft.
· I wrote my first alphabet book ever – I IS FOR ILLINOIS, as well as the accompanying workbook – ILLINOIS FUN FACTS & GAMES.
· I used my research from previous books and stories, sold and unsold, to write critical reading test paragraphs and accompanying questions for Quarasan’s educational text book clients.
· I put my story-telling to use creating formulaic generic under 400-word stories for children to personalize and reproduce when visiting the Sears Family Portrait website.
· I reviewed children’s books for the new monthly, dads magazine.
· I served as an editorial consultant for Childcraft’s HOW AND WHY LIBRARY's STORIES TO SHARE, working on themed stories about Heroes.
· I sold my middle grade novel THE CONFE$$ION$ AND $ECRET$ OF HOWARD J. FINGERHUT to Holiday House!
To my surprise, while each of the above efforts paid me, they also paid off in $urpri$ing ways.
Early critique clients showed me the need to create original teaching documents I use with the writers I coach. One client in particular recommended me to the Newberry Library, another to the University of Chicago’s Writer’s Studio - two institutions where I still teach today.
· Assessing the successful workings of themed fiction and nonfiction so they could work together as a whole sharpened my editorial eye.
· Reviewing opportunities showed me ways to keep my finger on the pulse of consumers and my Children’s Book World marketplace.
· Educational writing kept my readers, their abilities and interests on my radar.
· I automatically return to one almost-impossible-to-write mini-story – “A Dino-mite Dinosaur Time” – every time I think I can’t do something. (The assignment had been “dinosaurs camping out!”)
· Writing my Sleeping Bear Press LITTLE ILLINOIS was like going home again.
And each of the above efforts continues to pay off, not only for me the writer, the teacher, the presenter, but for my readers, my students and the writers I coach and care for.
One of my Heroines, Marian Dane Bauer, speaks of writers cobbling together a living – from writing, teaching, lecturing, whatever.
IMHO: that requisite cobbling often leads to unexpected riche$.
Speaking of which, don’t forget to enter our Book Giveaway to win a copy of The Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market 2016!
Here’s to happy cobbling!
Esther Hershenhorn
