Whatever You Write, Sell It

Last week while I was traveling, John Scalzi put up a long blog entry on the state of his writing earnings. The analysis compares his latest novel with an earlier analysis he did about 18 months ago for a previous book. He talks about sales, where his income is coming from, and the values he sees from working with established publishers for audiobook, e-book, and hard editions. Like any other single data point it's hard to know how much of this advice generalizes to others, but I particularly think people should pay attention to his "diversify" advice. It's more work for an author to build the relationships and arrange to get their work out via multiple channels, but I suspect it will give people more security and a better overall income.