Writer's choice


I’m not like other people, I didn’t get into writing because it was all I wanted to do. When I retired, my hobby was making wooden toys and sailing yachts but things change and I had no workshop and cracked three ribs and was banned from yachts. I came back from South Africa to start a boat yard with my son but after a hard look at the industry and doing the calculations, we gave that up. I then needed something that would make a bawbee or two and needed no more than a pencil and a piece of paper, saw an advert for a writing course with Writers Bureau that promised my money back if I didn’t make more than the cost of the course and had a go. I recovered the cost half way through and then looked at what to do long-term. I didn’t need to make a lot of money for a bit but the rent of our flat went up by 10% a year (Inflation isn’t normally much below that and it had been 17%) It meant the rent at £700 a month would rise by £70 in the first year, not much, but by year 7 it would be £1400 and I would need to be making £700 a month to pay for the increase. I had time to write a novel and had a look at that. Things have changed but at that time, the average income from a PUBLISHED novel, few were self published, was £5000. Not per annum, total.
I did the sums and that meant if one book made a million then:-
If the other books averaged £2000 there would be 332 published.
If the other books averaged £3000 there would be 450 published
What really hit me was that if ten other books earned £10,000 there would be 1095 PRINTED and earning ZILCH.
So I looked at other possibilities.

www.sullatoberdalton.com


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