Five Guaranteed Ways To Make Money As An Author By Ariella Papa

I LOL’d for real when I saw the topic of this cycle on this blog. I’m sure a lot of my Girlfriends did too. The topic was “Making Money as an Author” and after my belly laugh I had a moment where I thought, “Is that even possible?”

I kid, I kid. I’ve made money as an author, but the idea that someone can sustain a life as just by only writing is not realistic. Of course, I have a part time “day job”. There have two royalty periods where I have made so little that they held it over until the next royalty period. (BTW- another plug for indie publishing is that you don’t have to wait for those two magical times a year to find out how you’re doing, you can check your sales daily. That is also a job hazard.)

I thought about what one has to do to make money as an author and I honestly have no idea. I mean obviously you have to write. You have to force yourself to write more than you want, because the more you write the more options you have of things to sell and the more potential you have to make money. But of course, you’re probably doing that already, right? I hope so.

 Okay, so here are five foolproof plans that will rocket you to the top of the bestseller list so you can “make money as an author”.

Convince Lady Gaga to read your book and tweet her fans to buy it.

Get Justin Beiber to rap/sing sections of your book and put it on Youtube.

Compel HBO to adapt your book into a series that airs on Sunday night.

Befriend Oprah (I mean this one is so obvious. Doing this would solve all your issues.)

Travel back in time and plagiarize a current bestseller. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees with this one.  A lot of book success is many different stars aligning under the perfect situation so it might not work. Plus we’ve all seen Back to The Future.  Once you mess with the space time continuum things don’t always go as planned.

Really, no one can tell you how to make money as a writer. I’m already noticing a pattern in the advice from my fellow girlfriends, if you are in this for the money, you should probably get out now. If you are in it for the writing, than keep at it. And if you have Oprah’s number, I still want it.

Ariella Papa supports her writing habit with a day job. In an ideal world her latest book A Semester Abroad will make her some bank. But if not, that’s okay too.