Can I check that online? How much money e.g. Stehen King or some other big name is making a year?
4
-
3They are private citizens and are no different from your colleague. You can dig as much information as privacy laws allow about a colleague you've never spoken to, as you could dig information about Stephen King, Tom Brown or Gwyneth Paltrow. What is the point of this question?– Blessed GeekNov 6, 2013 at 12:35
-
@BlessedGeek I need that for one project in my school.– DerfderNov 6, 2013 at 13:31
-
I'm not convinced this is on-topic. Questions that affect you as a writer, like how much you might someday expect to earn, are fine, but this feels like a question about specific writers, not writing. Thoughts?– Monica CellioNov 7, 2013 at 17:03
-
@MonicaCellio IMO, this is on-topic, more or less. But will ping you in chat.– Goodbye Stack ExchangeNov 7, 2013 at 17:43
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
As Blessed Geek pointed out; writers are people, and you can't just go check their wages.
On the other hand; "famous writers" will likely have a net worth that can be found on the internet. For instance; Forbes: Stephen King's net worth (this from a Google search against the term Stephen King net worth)
Keep in mind though that a net worth will include all assets they own, and any net worth they gain from other ventures and even from film rights and merchandise.
Literary authors don't have a regular income. They receive advances and royalties (a percentage of each individual book sale). Therefore, the monthly income varies with the author's productivity, the publisher's advances, and the numbers of readers buying his books.
Advances from indepentent publishers range between $1,000 and $5,000, while major publishers pay from $50,000 to $100,000. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez received $475,000 for The Dirty Girls Social Club, Jonathan Safran Foer received $500,000 for the hardcover and $925,000 the paperback rights for his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated. (http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/n_8972/)
I don't know of a page collecting advances, but many of the higher ones have been reported in the news, so you should be able to find many with a Google search. For example Bill Clinton received $15 million and Pope John Paul II $8.5 million (http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2012/10/04/lena-dunham-bill-clinton-keith-richards-more-big-book-deals-photos.html), but these are not authors in the regular sense and cannot be compared to the contracts of professional novel writers.