They live In the shadows

As a published writer of anything - whether fiction, non-fiction, journalism, or whatever - there is that feeling of getting your 15-minutes of fame. “Look Mam, there’s my name in this glossy magazine. Look Dad, I actually wrote those words”. It probably sustains you for the next couple of articles (or short stories, poems, etc). But writing can be hard work. My published articles are very technical in nature, requiring a lot of research or product testing. Each article averages around 2,500 words and took several hours each to write.

I stopped a while back with 5 of these articles under my belt thinking: Ok, I’ve got my name in print. Tens of thousands of people have read them and may have gained some benefit from them. Yet each article gained me just 80 Euro per page.

80 Euro per page might sound ok to some people, but let me point out that magazine pages are not the same as novel pages. A novel page will average about 250 words per page, but a magazine page will usually be significantly more. In my case, the average was about 700 - 800 words per page. Throw in some pictures and I was getting about 3.5 pages per article. Or, to put it another way, about 280 Euro per article. Not bad for a day’s work by most peoples’ standard, but we are talking about one-off pieces of work here.

Believe me, when you have seen your name in print a few times, the stars in your eyes fade pretty quickly. Writing may be an art form, but it’s also a career for many. Far from having some romantic notions about “being” a writer, I am at the stage where I want to see some bucks for my bang - to paraphrase slightly. Sure, being a well known writer is something I would aspire to - but I would trade that in a heartbeat for cold hard cash. That doesn’t make me a Philistine; it just means I would prefer to pay my mortgage from my writing endeavours than from anything else.

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