What It Costs to Be a Working Writer, Part 1: Money

Becoming a working writer wasn’t ever in my plan when I began publishing in the 80s. I just loved to write, and I was so happy to see my work in print. Most of those early publications didn’t pay much, if anything, but eventually I was writing books and those did pay.

For my early books, I earned advances and royalties for many years. For my later books, advances were few but royalties are still appearing each quarter or annually.

I began to have expenses, to keep my writing business going. I had to pay for software for tax preparation, a post-office box for business correspondence, a membership in the Authors Guild for legal assistance with contracts, extra iCloud storage, subscriptions and fees for classes I took and writers I read here on Substack, domain and hosting fees for my website, and more.

In the lull while my agent read my new manuscript, I began working on short stories and wanted to submit them. I signed up for a tracking software called Duotrope. Many lit mags now charge a small fee for submissions. So that became a new expense. And if I wanted to send a story out to a contest, more fees.

Eventually my books were published. I began a campaign marketing with pre-orders, submitting to contests again, and posting on social media. Another writer told me about Canva, an online program that makes it easy to create graphics for my social media posts. From yet another writer, I learned about subscribing to later.com to schedule these posts.

Soon, I had eighteen separate expense categories to run my business these past two years. Each time I needed another assist, I researched and asked other writers, signed up for a trial, then subscribed if it worked well.

How much does it all cost?

How much did it all cost, in the end? What does it cost now, to be a fully functioning working writer?

These past two years, I had no time to consider this. These years have been a flurry: two books published and mega efforts at self-promotion. This January, as things finally calmed, I sat down to assess what I was still paying out, if these expenses were worth it, and what I could now reduce.

I’m always grateful for the universe’s perfect timing. That week, I received my monthly newsletter from Kerstin Martin’s Calm Business. Kerstin is the wonderful guide whose online course helped me successfully set up two websites on Squarespace. She has the mission of finding ways to approach business from a calm perspective, and I love reading her thoughts on this.

Ironically, she was also doing a yearly review of what it cost her to be in business. She recommends this annually. I was behind that timeline, but I wanted to try.

It took a bit of searching through my accounting software for 2024 to track all the expenses. There were a lot! Many are still valid but some I could immediately see no longer served.

Kerstin encourages her subscribers to make a list of anything they pay for that has to do with their business for the past year. So first, we need to shift our view of our writing—ask, Is this actually a business? Am I selling anything (book, stories, classes, workshops, articles)? And what am I paying out, to make this happen?

Are you running a writing business?

I accepted that my writing was a business when I got my first payment for a published article, even more so when I got my first advance and royalty check. Suddenly, I had to account for this income in my tax return. I also began to track my expenses.

But so many writers don’t consider themselves businesspeople. We are, if we’re publishing at all or hope to.

Jane Friedman’s classic The Business of Being a Writer opened many eyes to this truth. We’re not taught how to be a businessperson in our MFA programs or by our agents or from most instructors of writing classes. The business of writing is part of the package if you’re looking to sell your work. Like it or not, we writers will eventually come face to face with it.

Business includes not just the money you (hopefully) make on each published piece of writing but your self-promotion, the software you use, the subscriptions you pay for, the equipment you fund.

So my review in January felt like a huge relief—to be faced with the actual money I was spending on my business and decide what was still worth it.

A year’s expenses, in categories

I’ll share my own expense list, just because I found it so helpful to read Kerstin’s. It reminded me of some of the hidden expenditures I was making too.

Not everyone will have all or even most of these. I may be at a different place in my writing business than you are. But perhaps some of this exercise will be helpful, if you’re feeling your expenses are slipping out of mind.

Totals are rounded up to the nearest dollar.

Business basics

This includes my internet use, laptop software for writing and email, website design and hosting, domain name for my business name, Zoom for my classes and workshops and book launches, iCloud extra storage, legal help, professional dues, and more.

Expenses for 2024 (in no particular order):

Zoom Pro Workplace subscription (for meetings) $160/year

Microsoft 365 subscription (for MS Word because I can’t stand the Apple version even though I have a Mac) $70/year

Parallels subscription (to let me have a PC platform on my Mac) $70/year

Squarespace for website hosting $192/year

Godaddy for domain name $25/year

PO box for business correspondence not online $50/year

Supplemental iCloud storage $2.99/month

Business tax software $60 plus $20 update/year

Authors Guild membership for legal assistance with contracts, etc. $149/year

Education

I take classes to keep my skills up, I subscribe to an online video instruction series, I read and subscribe to certain Substacks to both support the writers and be part of this community.

Expenses for 2024 (in no particular order):

Substack subscriptions (the Substack newsletters I pay for to support my favorite writers) $150/year

Epiphany subscription for my art classes $385/year

Online classes $600/year

Books and writing supplies (printer ink and paper, notebooks, pens, books, etc.) $650

Marketing my work

Expenses for 2024 (in no particular order):

Upgrading my podcast setup—new ring lights, rolling desk, and a good mic $300

Canva Pro (graphic design program for making posts for social media) $120/year

Later (schedules social media posts created in Canva) $45/month

Duotrope (to track my submissions) $50/year

Amazon ads $60/year average

What I’ll keep, what I’ll stop

My marketing campaign is almost over, although I’m still repurposing the podcast interviews that are just coming out, sharing the links on socials and here in my newsletters when the topic is valuable to readers. But I expect to back down to a free Canva subscription when my year is up and cancel my Later monthly subscription at the end of March. I’ve already paused my Amazon ads—they didn’t pay off in increased book sales, anyway.

I’ll keep my Duotrope subscription because it’s cheap and still useful.

I’m not sure about my Authors Guild membership. I’ve been a member since the 90s but I haven’t really used their services—my agent was able to troubleshoot one publishing contract, which is what the AG famously helps writers with. I like supporting the organization, but I have to think about where my dollars are going.

Education expenses will probably go up, which fits my year ahead goal of becoming a learner again. I still love my several hours a week, studying new painting techniques from my favorite artists on Epiphany, and I’m excited to be part of a new five-month course for short-story collections from Grub Street.

My basic business expenses won’t change much. I am comfortable paying for all those services and use them all the time.

This week’s exercise lets you make your own expenses inventory, if you want to follow my steps. It’s a good eye-opener if you consider yourself in the business of writing.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This exercise is good preparation for doing your year-end accounting to file taxes, if you do that. Make a rough list of everything you spend money on, as a writer. Then scan 2024 online bank or credit card statements to see what it actually costs. (This takes less time than it sounds if your subscriptions are annual.) I save emailed receipts in my inbox folders on Outlook, so I can just search for the name of the subscription, such as Squarespace, to get the amount I paid.

After you have a good accounting of your expenses, consider each for its value to your writing life. Are there some that you no longer need, to make way for other expenses you really do need, like a software upgrade?

Share your comments below. Anything you spend money on that I missed above?