How Much do Fiction Writers Earn?

And a little bit about the magic of attitude.

“A low shot of a man in leather boots carrying a brown leather bag” by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

The question of how much a fiction writer earns is a tough one to answer, because there are so many fiction writers and they run the gamut from zero to richer than the Queen of England.

Remember sixth grade math? Average is found by adding up what every fiction writer earns in a year and then dividing the answer by the total number fiction writers.

So, if 100 fiction writers earned a total of $100,000 — then the average income is $1000.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the answer to the question of average into for ‘writers and authors’ in 2016 was $61,820 per year. (Writers and Authors covers more writers than just novelists. So this isn’t a perfect answer on more than one level.)

I’ll pause a minute for most of the fiction writers that I know to catch their breath from all the laughing.