Can you make a living as a fantasy writer?

[Mdnight Falling]

Personally, I think it's a nice dream.. I mean J.KRawling did it.. R.A Salvatore did it... Richard adams did it.. the list goes on and on.. But think of the day in age we live in... Our genre is half assed dying out. With the age of internet and video games hardly anyone bothers even reading anymore, unless they know who the author is... But I think it is possible, but I'd have a back up plan simply because if your luck is like mine, you won't get rich at all LOL.... My fiancee he wanted to make it big as a writer and his first book, Winter night falling while it;'s a fantastic read, isn't selling very well. It's doing so poorly that the book stores are sending them back for a refund that comes out his royalties. So I figure unless you have connections in the industry or something that can really catch people's eye.. I wouldn't lay all my cards on living off being a writer

 

[Chilari]

I think the answer is to use online distribution - ebooks cost hardly anything to produce and very little to distribute. Selling one for a small amount - £1 or £2 - means that buyers will risk it if it's an unknown author, because it's hardly anything to spend, and means that the author gets a larger cut of the sale price because there's no money spent on printng. Then once you've sold a few, readers who liked it will recommend it to their friends because it's cheap and good, and then you can make some money from high numbers of low cost sales.

But as with any form of making money, I think it depends on several factors - skill, luck, publicity, but also going about things the right way.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

I think the answer is to use online distribution - ebooks cost hardly anything to produce and very little to distribute. Selling one for a small amount - £1 or £2 - means that buyers will risk it if it's an unknown author, because it's hardly anything to spend, and means that the author gets a larger cut of the sale price because there's no money spent on printng. Then once you've sold a few, readers who liked it will recommend it to their friends because it's cheap and good, and then you can make some money from high numbers of low cost sales..

I'm going to look into that.. I think it's ironic though.. Bry's book which is really doing horribly... is a big seller out your neck of the woods Chilari.. though I hate that the publisher has the price so high.. it's like 20 us dollars... I dunno what that is out there but I know it's more then the book should cost.. and he thinks so too.. Which is why we are looking for a new publisher so we can republish Winter Night Falling and get the rest of the series out.. If you guys know any good ones let me know

 

[Ophiucha]

Could you? Absolutely. J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Christopher Paolini, and numerous others make a living off of writing fantasy. Should you rely on it? Absolutely not. For every SMeyer or Rowling there are a hundred people who never see more than their forward for a book. Unless you can write and publish a book a month, you couldn't live on that.