However, creative writers often find it impossible to make a living from their craft. Advances for books are often quite small for unpublished authors, novelists rarely make more than $20,000 a year (first time novelists, usually far less) from traditional publishers, and finding a home for your short stories or poetry that pays better than the literary magazines (which often pay nothing all) can be a challenge.
Traditionally published books have a better shot at the Best Seller's List, but the downside is that many traditionally published books don't stay in print much more than a year. The novelists who are making over $20,000 a year are usually the prolific ones who can author several books in a year. The average earnings for a novelist from traditional publishers is around $10,000 (before paying agent fees).
It's not necessarily all gloom or doom though.
Creative writers can also be good at creating their own means to support themselves with the writing they love. For example, some do very well self publishing their own novels, while others create clever online businesses ("Will Pen Poetry for Food"?) and so on.
Some of the hottest best sellers were initially self published - Eragon written by then teen-aged Christopher Paolini, for example.
It's not surprising that more and more new and published authors alike are finding they can do better financially with their books by eliminating the middle man and selling their own books.
If you self-publish, rather than pay an enormous up amount up front to have your book printed, consider a print on demand (POD) service such as Booklocker or arrange for this yourself with a local printer, with the idea being to print out books as sales orders come in.
While print rather than digital is generally the better choice for fiction, you may want to try a digital format and sell through Amazon (Kindle) as well as in PDF (which is mobile friendly) off your own site.
Thousands of novels are read in digital format with many of these being made available online at public library sites. Either way, you needn't market in the traditional manners.
To promote your novel, you might try publishing or podcastng a chapter every so many days and selling a downloadable version for those who don't want to wait for the next installment.
With a little brainstorming (writers' forums can help with this), you can come up with all sorts of marketing ideas for your self-published works.
Ghostwriting, creative writers are often contracted by publishers for book series, and there's also the formula type fiction (as in the romance genre) that gets written in hyper speed and keeps paychecks flowing.
Other creative writers delve in nonfiction and/or copywriting to support themselves while creating and marketing their literary work.
The high levels of creativity and imagination that you use in creative writing can be used in marketing your works.
If your passion is creative writing, remember that while there is more than a grain of truth to the starving artist image, this needn't be you, not if you're flexible and creative on the business side.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Leichter is the author of The Freelance Writer's GPS: Explore freelance opportunities, chart your course, and navigate a successful writing career. To learn how to become a freelance writer - where to find freelance writing opportunities that are right for you and how to land them, how to manage a prosperous writing business and more, visit FreelanceWritingforProfit.com
