Is Writing Books Still Worth It In 2025?
No fame, no fortune ... just hard truth, hustle and homemade tacos
The banner in front of my local Taco Bell advertises its $16 per hour starting wage.
It puts things into perspective when I consider how much money I am and am not making as a writer.
Ros Barber’s recent post Authors and the Truth About Money is a good read. She shares how much money she does not make as an accomplished, traditionally published writer.
She got a £5,000 advance on her book Devotion. (A British pound is about $1.32)
Barber fills in her budget with teaching, but every hour you’re working at another job is another hour you are not writing.
If you’re a published author, you know this
It doesn’t matter whether you’re going the self-publishing or traditional publishing route; either way, you’re unlikely to get rich doing this.
Caveat: It matters a lot what you’re writing. If you build a following for a series of popular genre novels, you certainly can make good money. Maybe even excellent money.
If you’re writing the sort of serious novels that are short-listed for literary prizes, you probably will not.
Most writers depend on other sources of support. If you have family money, that certainly makes it easier, but many of us failed to choose wealthy parents.
Some people teach English and others work in an entirely unrelated field, dreaming of that million-dollar advance or for their book to be turned into a movie or Netflix series so they can write full time. (The Trailer Park Rules would make a great Netflix series, I think. Somebody call me!)
Here’s how I make money as a writer
I cobble together several different writing hustles, and each of them helps feed into the others. I never envisioned I’d be doing what I’m doing today, but it turns out I had been preparing for it all my life.
I started out as a journalism major with an English minor, so I took lots of writing classes. News writing, creative writing, feature writing and more. This foundation helped me a lot.
Then I spent about three decades in newsrooms, learning to write and edit quickly and well. I also spent some time at a marketing and advertising agency, where I learned a lot about digital advertising, SEO and promotion that have turned out to be quite useful to me now.
I built a decent audience on Medium, which was until recently a pretty good place to do that. That’s where I published my first-ever (and only, to date) viral article, which made me enough money to realize I could in fact do this full-time.
Yes, of course I’m going to share a link to that article. As I mentioned, I learned a lot about promotion at the agency! The article is called We Could Learn a Lot About Sex From the Dutch, and it has had 203K reads and is about to hit a total of $30K in earnings.
No book I have ever written has out-earned that one viral piece, which probably took me about two or three hours to write. It’s my goal in life to change that fact.
When Medium started going wonky in January, I shifted my priorities to Substack. I publish Untrickled, which focuses on income inequality, and of course The Indie Author.
Incidentally, Kristina God and her Online Writing Club played a role in the origin story for this publication. She had me on a Substack Live and her members had a lot of questions about self-publishing books that I realized I had the answers to.
That’s when I realized I should be sharing my knowledge
And here we are.
I also do some freelance SEO writing and proofing, and then there are my books.
Everything I write, no matter how different, helps me write and find an audience for everything else. Readers may find me via Medium, Substack or my books, and then they may seek out my work on other platforms. It is working well for me.
Some months Medium does really well. Some months I get several new subscribers to my Substacks. Some months I sell quite a few books. Some months I get extra freelance work. It all comes together and is just enough.
Adding it all together, my earnings exceed what I would make if I worked at Taco Bell. You may think that’s not a particularly high bar and it’s not, but I made starvation wages at newspapers so I’ve been conditioned to be happy with whatever I can get.
My kids are grown and I live in a place with a low cost of living, and I know how to make killer tacos at home. I am able to wake up every morning, walk my dogs and then write whatever I want.
Life satisfaction, to me, is better than money.
Upcoming topics on The Indie Author:
How hard is it to format a book? Should I do it myself or pay someone to handle it?
How software can help you choose keywords, categories and more.
Of Plotting and Pantsing: Which kind of writer are you?
Here’s how to find the right title for your book.
Should I write under my real name or a pen name?
What are you writing?
I’d love to know. Please introduce yourself in the comments. Share what you’re writing and what questions you have. Let’s build a learning community for independent authors!
About Michelle Teheux
I’m a writer in central Illinois who has published 21 books, most of them self-published. Subscribe to The Indie Author! My other Substack, Untrickled, is about income inequality. You can also subscribe to me on Medium. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. My most recent nonfiction book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. Tips accepted at Ko-fi.
All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park
For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.
Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.
When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.
Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.
Hi Michelle! I make my living writing, but the kind of writing that pays my bills comes from freelance and contract gigs with Corporate America. Sadly, that’s also the kind of writing that kills my soul. My first book (literary fiction) was published in 2016, and although sales were semi-decent, it just broke even after everything I invested in publicity. My second book (memoir) is coming out in April 2026. I’ve learned a little more this time around, and I’m hoping to actually make a bit of profit on this one. I’m considering doing some more self-publishing as well (which is why I’m here! 😊) I have some YA in me, and I’d also like to try my hand at some mystery/thriller. I self-publish erotica under a pseudonym. 🤫 So “cobbling,” I understand. My goal is to ultimately replace my corporate gigs with all my cobbling, but I’m not quite there yet. Sadly, corporate writing pays pretty well, and I’ve been spoiled by that. I’m learning to pare down my expenses and live more simply. 💙
I’m in the filling in gaps by teaching English category! I feel like I’m in good company lol. Right now it’s mostly all gaps and the teaching leaves some gaps as well… but I hope for a brighter tomorrow ha ha. Right now I am serializing a serious literary novel that will not likely be shortlisted for prizes. Maybe someday I’ll write something with more commercial viability!