No, not a French egg. Thank you for the kind comments on my describing my feelings on letting another book out into the wild.
Just for amusement’s sake, here is what my current body of work looks like:
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The less numerically challenged among you (those who don’t count on their fingers) may wonder how this represents 31 books. Although what you see are all unique, they do include different editions and translations. I’ve never done a headcount of these before, but it amounts to 112 in all.
Thank goodness I’ve never bothered to read them.
Gosh, Brian. Now you’ve shown me yours, I am compelled to show you mine. Not as impressive as your heaving shelves, I admit. I am keen to know, though, whether you make a living just by writing books, and if so, how many books you needed to have written achieve self-sufficiency, as it were? What are your most successful titles, commercially and/or artistically? What are the least, and why? Tell us more, Brian – some writers out here could use your sage advice! After exposing
yourselfyour oeuvre so publicly, you can hardly turn back now. Can you?Henry –
The simple answer is ‘sometimes’ (on making a living from writing books).
In a good year I could live on the books alone, but equally, for example, I had three years between 2003 and 2006 when I had hardly any book income – so I do various other things to try to even out the cashflow.
I wish I could live on the books alone – what it takes is some big advances, and as you’ve had a much bigger one than I’ve ever had (ahem), you’ll know about that. I’ve had consistently bigger advances since I’ve had an agent.
I’m sorry if this sounding like a politician’s answer, but the commercial success answer is difficult to make, because you have to ask if a book with a big advance that doesn’t sell well is a commercial success or not.
My most straightforward commercial success is my recent Global Warming Survival Kit which both had a decent advance and has sold well. But then, for example, my book on Roger Bacon The First Scientist which I love but didn’t sell well, actually made me a fair amount of money as the first publisher that bought it closed down without publishing it, so I got paid twice for it.
Quite a lot of my books are what one of my publishers refers to as ‘ice-cream money books’, the idea being they earn enough to buy the kids some ice-creams in the summer, but they ain’t going to change your life.
I’d say my greatest failure was a book called The Complete Flier’s Handbook which really suffered once it left the ‘three for two’ table because there were was nowhere to put it in the bookshop. Travel sections are arranged by country and tend not to have a ‘general’ section.
I’m not sure I can judge artistic merit. I guess I’d pick out Light Years which was my first science book, but is still going strong in a new edition, so it’s like an old friend.
Great Image Henry. Is that you fighting back invasive rhododendron species or is it the cover shot from Shaking the Tree.
@Brian C. – your point about royalties vs advances is well-taken. All told I made over £100,000 in advances for Deep Time (I think that’s the book to which you allude) at a time when science books were sexy and publishers were throwing silly money around to get something – anything – on their list.
However, after tax and agency fees and spread out over three years, it’s not as much as it sounds. It was, however, life-changing enough to allow my wife to give up work for those three years so we could start our family.
After that publishers have come to their senses I’ve had nothing approaching that sum since – more in the ice-cream money range. But nothing I’ve written has made any royalty except Before The Backbone – and I wrote that without an advance.
@Brian D. It’s a photoshopped version of a picture taken of me for a local paper to advertise a talk I was giving in Cromer about The Science of Middle-earth [thinks – really, I ought to ask permission].
The location was Sheringham Park, a National Trust property that has the most amazingly old and gnarled rhododendrons that made the photographer think of Galadhremmin Ennorath (trans: ‘tree-tangled Middle-earth’). He made me climb up in one and hang on as long as possible while he fiddled around with a wide-angle (almost fish-eye) lens.
Henry – he must have been an extraordinary photographer if anything made him think of Galadhremmin Ennorath. I’m lucky if something makes me think of beans on toast (say) or girrafes.
Yep, that’s the advance I was enviously refering to. I’ve mostly made royalties on my business books which tend to have very low advances (<=£2,000), but then a small steady income – foreign translations help a lot with these.
he must have been an extraordinary photographer if anything made him think of Galadhremmin Ennorath
No, it was me who thought of Galadhremmin Ennorath. I am allowed to think of such things without any irony or self-consciousness because I’m on the committee of the Tolkien Society. The photographer just thought Tolkien = woody bits and pieces.
Tolkien = woody bits and pieces. Discuss.
Should the parody have been called Board of the Rings then?
Very good, Bob. Just bring on the Rohirrim, preferably with Bernard Hill doing a speech or two.
Boardroom Of The Rings
The Scene: Committee Room 1, Edoras
King Theoden: Speaking for myself personally, at the end of the day, the derisory offer of the Gondorians to roll out the criteria and run them up the flagpole doesn’t meet with the aspirations of our members for a fair and just society.
Rohirrim, Wizards, Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Ents, etc., etc. Bingo!