Sandy's Soapbox

My other blog is a spinoff of my day job, as a professor. Like this one, it's open— I choose the topic and then desperately find a way to retrofit it into the overall theme. That theme is 'astronautical engineering'. If gaming is all about success, is it that odd my latest engineering blog talks about failure? Go ahead, click to learn about Interview Bait.

My reason for invoking it here is partially to talk about one of my favorite subjects, about how strangely writers get paid. I've talked here about (cost inversion) and the irony that my articles here get more views, but my less-read works pay better. And yes, my other blog gig pays. It probably works out to 15 cents/word, which in gaming terms, ain't bad. Pity I'm limited to 1-2 a month or I'd write me a minivan.

As in, assuming a $20,000 used minivan bought at 15 cents/word, that equals 133,000 words. That's just two 150-page sourcebooks, or thirty 10-page ebooks, or... hmmm... 267 blog entries. Except, game publishers don't pay 15 cents/word. And my most recent eBook paid a less than stunning advance of $1000— for 60 pages— against a less than reasonable 10% royalty. And no one prepays for 267 blog entries.

Going fully candid, writing is about 2-5% of my income most years (12% during one particularly good year). My latest tech ebook (on Raspberry Pi facial recognition/machine learning, for the curious) offered a lower royalty than my previous ones, for no other reason than the publisher could get away with it. Publishers still think there are lots of equivalent writers out there. As a self-stated B-list writer whose primary income is not writing, that gives me a large amount of freedom to pick my venues. So while I feel I can give advice on hustling and earning money, I'm not the poster child for it.

Okay, RPGnet, I concede. While there is a difference between free and being paid a writer's rate, the numbers show the difference isn't as much as I first thought. I'll stay here, keep the other blog as my side piece, and we'll just continue the writer's hustle like nothing happened, right?

Best regards,
Sandy
sandy@rpg.net, freelance