Several recent surveys focused on the pay rates on income of independent and freelance writers.
The Authors Guild’s 2018 Author Income Survey collected pay data from over 5,000 published book authors. They found that the median pay for full-time book authors was $20,300 in 2017, and that number decreased to $6,080 when part-time writers were included.
They report this is a 42% decline in authors earnings over the past decade.
The Authors Guild cites the growing dominance of Amazon, lower royalties and advances for all but best selling books and extremely low royalties paid on the increasing number of deeply discounted books and ebooks for the decline.
However, if an author can get in the top 10% of earners things are pretty good.
Among the top 10%, those who self-publish earned a median income of $154,000 and those who are traditionally published earned a median of $305,000.
The second survey comes from The Make a Living Writing blog. The Pay Survey 2019: What 1,400+ Freelancers Get Paid to Write study surveyed writers of all types, with most writing articles and blog posts.
As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge) nearly one-third of writers report they earn under $20 an hour for their work.
But again there is good news. 10% report they earn more than $76 an hour, and another 17% earn $50-$75 per hour.
The article has a number of suggestions on how writers can increase their earnings. These are beyond the scope of this post, but if you're a writer you should visit The Make a Living Writing blog for this information.
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