Writing is not profitable anymore

Hi all

As some of you may already know, I have decided to hang up my quill after writing one more book. The main reason for this is that, for me and many like me, writing books is no longer worth the effort regarding financial rewards.  On a personal level, writing is wonderful:  the ability to discover new aspects of subjects during research and then share them with readers has always filled me with excitement.  BUT .... I can earn more in a fortnight working two hours a day as a tutor than I receive in six months in royalties from all of my books.

This is not due to my books not selling.  It is due to the onset of the digital age.  When amazon sells 2,000 digital copies of only one of  my books and I receive 2.5 pence (for American readers, that's about 3.5c) per book, it is unsurprising that I can no longer justify sitting at home and writing.  Each book take c.18 months of research and composition, and such small reward is more than slightly insulting.  Of more importance, I need money to live, and it is simply no longer worthwhile.

I often wonder how many other writers have entered the publishing world in hope and excitement and been discouraged and so stopped writing simply because financially it is no longer viable.

I understand the financial realities. I’m so sorry to hear this, however.

That said, please realize your books have touched and influenced a whole generation of historians (both professional and amateur). 

Please continue to share your considerable scholarship with us, however, on sites like this.

I occasionally try to delve into the depths of this forum by reading old posts (btw there are many with Zero answers from participants with the total of 1-2 posts, which makes me believe that the forum was never particularly popular, even at its best times when the frequency of new posts and the number of participants were higher than today). So this is how I came across a discussion of the Harris's Cicero trilogy. Never heard of the books before, so I've googled and found that a Russian translation of the Imperium is available. A very good reading, I have to say, even for a stranger like me who is not even formally educated in history. The Imperium came out in 2006, and since then the author published 2 more volumes, the latter was published in 2015, so I assume the business of book writing must have been somewhat profitable for him. I still have to read 1/3 of the Imperium to finish it off, but already see  that the author is really knowledgeable about the subject and makes it intriguing/ thrilling for a reader to follow. So it seems the study of the ancient Rome history can be turned into something both entertaining and lucrative for the author too.

PS I've just read that Robert Harris was also behind the script for the Ghost writer movie by Polanski, which I quite liked watching.