Author/Writer
You write it, then cut and rewrite until it sounds like you and nobody else. That voice is what makes writing worth paying for, and two paths lead in: steady commercial writing, or authoring your own books.
Related: Journalist, Content Creator, Editor
The day in the life
The poem · your opening
Bus stop, rain · ~20 lines
- •bus stop, rain, that in-between feeling
- •a couple of images circling, nothing written yet
- •the first line decides how the rest sounds
the blank page, before your first line
Three first lines, from three poems people sent Lena. Which one would you keep reading?
Try a day as an author/writer
A short, playful taste of the real work.
Writing for businesses pays a steady wage. Writing books is a gamble almost nobody wins.
Two ways in: a beginner job writing for a company, or write a book and sell it yourself online, which nobody can stop you doing.
What you’d do all day
The picture is writing what you love in creative flow; the reality on the commercial side is writing to a brief under deadlines, with heavy editing, and book-authoring is mostly solitary, with most of the time spent marketing and most books earning little. Generic content and copy get drafted instantly now, so what holds value is a distinctive voice, persuasion that works, and the judgment to edit and direct the tools rather than be replaced by them.
- Drafting & writing40%
- Research15%
- Editing & revision20%
- Marketing & building an audience15%
- Admin & business10%
Most of the day is the writing itself, with a good chunk spent fixing what you wrote yesterday.
What you write changes almost everything else about the job.
- Fictioninventing a story and characters from nothing.
- Nonfictionresearching something real and explaining it clearly.
- Copywritingwriting the words that sell a product or a brand.
- Screenwritingwriting dialogue and scenes meant to be filmed, not read.
A typical early-career day
- 9:00Read the brief
Get clear on what you’re writing and for whom: the brief, the audience, the constraints. Or research your own topic.
- 10:30Draft
Write the first version. Getting words down is the part people picture, and it’s a slice of the job.
- 1:00Edit & revise
Cut, sharpen, rewrite. This is the bulk of real writing, and where it gets good.
- 3:00Draft fast, you edit
The generic stuff gets produced fast; your voice and judgment are what make it worth reading.
- 4:00Pitch & market
Take client notes, pitch editors, or market your book. For authors, this eats more time than the writing.
Commercial writing has steadier deadlines and steadier pay. Writing books is slower and more solitary, with the business side eating most of the time.
The outlook
Where it’s going
Salaried commercial writing is growing modestly, but AI is hitting the commodity layer hard: generic content, SEO, and first-draft copy are among the most exposed work anywhere, and machine-written books are flooding the self-publishing bottom. So the generic end is getting automated, while distinctive voice, persuasion that converts, and original ideas hold their value. The writer becomes the voice and judgment on top of the drafts.
Right now
Commercial writing has a real salaried floor, but its commodity end (generic content, SEO, first-draft copy) is the most exposed writing there is. Copywriting that converts and technical writing hold up better. Creative authoring is a brutal lottery (the typical author earns a few thousand a year), though the door is wide open and the work can be its own reward, so a steady paycheck means commercial or specialized writing, where voice and persuasion still matter.
Would you like it?
Worth a look if your writing sounds like nobody else, and you can use the tools to sharpen it without letting them write it for you.
Tap any that sound like you.
In practice, people realize it’s their thing when…
…and it probably isn’t their thing when
How people get in
- 4
- Years it takes on average
- $48K
- Average cost
- $10,000
- A full time author makes from books
Every way in
Writing for somebody else
About 7 in 10
Four years · About $48K for a degree
Publishing it yourself
About 3 in 10
However long the book takes · Nothing but your time
Those are the two real ways in, and most working writers end up doing both at once.
How the money actually gets decided
There is no exam and nobody to apply to. Anybody can put a book up for sale tomorrow, which is why the hard part here is not getting in, it is getting paid.
What gets you paid to write
- The subject you study barely moves it. A writing degree and an English degree pay within about $100 of each other four years out, both around $48,500.
- What you have actually written, and whether anybody read it. There is no form for this and nothing to fill in.
Getting in is not the hard part here. What decides the money is not on any form: it is what kind of book you choose to write.
- In 2022, full time romance authors made about $31,700 a year from their books and full time literary fiction authors made about $5,000. Same craft, same door, six times the money.
- The middle full time author made about $10,000 that year from books, and about $20,000 once everything else writing brought in was added.
- A salaried writing job is a different thing from writing books, and it pays about $72,300 in the middle. That figure leaves out everybody working for themselves.
- People who had been publishing their own books since 2018 made about $24,000 from them in 2022, against $13,700 back at the start.
- The same year, Black authors made about $2,400 from their books against about $11,000 for white authors. White authors were more likely to have a publisher behind them and spent well over twice as much getting their books noticed.
When to apply
There is nothing you are required to apply for. Two dates matter: one you can miss by accident, and one that starts the day your book goes on sale.
- In high schoolNothing to decide. No subject is required and no course is expected of you, so write things and finish them.
- Around November 19Some universities run an extra writing degree you take after college, and it is the one thing here you actually apply for. The famous one advertises December 1. You have to file a second form first, the login that lets you pay the fee takes up to three working days to arrive, and Thanksgiving sits in the gap. Miss that and the December date is no use to you.
- If you get inThat course pays you $36,500 a year and covers the fees, for three years. It takes twelve people out of roughly a thousand who apply, so it is worth wanting and not worth planning around.
- Three months after your book goes on saleA book is yours the moment you write it, but you cannot take anybody to court over it until it is registered with the Copyright Office. Register inside three months of it going on sale and whoever copied you pays your legal bill too. After that, they do not.
How long it takes
Nobody has to let you in and there is no qualification to earn. Most people who write for a living took a four year degree in something, and what decides the money afterwards is not the degree, it is what you choose to write.
A book takes a year and pays the middle author about $10,000. Finding out whether you actually like the work, sitting with a blank page and finishing something anyway, takes an afternoon.
Try writing something and finishing itWrite and Publish Your Own Story or Poems
Write a short story or a small book of poems, then put it somewhere anyone can read it. Write it first, then let AI suggest fixes and sharpen it without letting it take over. That last part is the whole skill, keeping the writing sound like you and nobody else, and it is harder than it sounds.
Where these numbers come from
Written by the Sidequest team, from the sources below.
- Pay: BLS Writers and Authors (SOC 27-3043, median $72,270, May 2024; excludes self-employed) + Technical Writers (higher, separate); Authors Guild survey (median book-author income); Salary.com copywriter bands.
- The outlook: BLS Writers and Authors (27-3043, +9%, May 2024); Authors Guild survey; self-publishing + AI-content reporting (2025-26). Dated June 2026.
- Getting in: How many people take each route is our own estimate, rounded. O*NET OnLine 27-3043.00 (Writers and Authors), Job Zone Four, SVP 7.0 to under 8.0; site updated May 19 2026, read August 2026. O*NET reports this occupation education answer qualitatively, with no percentages attached, so no split is stated here. The Authors Guild, Key Takeaways from the 2023 Author Income Survey, updated October 25 2023, reporting income year 2022 from 5,699 published authors with 36 collaborating organizations, read August 2026, for every author income figure: the $10,000 median full time book income and $20,000 with other writing added, the $31,725 romance and $5,000 literary fiction full time medians, and the $24,000 figure for people self publishing since at least 2018 against $13,700 in 2018. Those figures are income year 2022 and are not restated as current. U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, field of study data, read August 2026: CIP 23.13 Rhetoric and Composition and Writing Studies at bachelor level, 506 programs, national median $48,471 four years out; CIP 23.01 English Language and Literature at bachelor level, 1,301 programs and 33,025 graduates, national median $48,590. CIP 23.13 contains creative writing but is broader than it. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, its own Our MFA and Apply pages, read August 2026, for the $36,500 annual award, the fees paid directly, the three year in residence program, the twelve seats against about 1,000 applications, the December 1 deadline, the separate graduate application whose portal credentials take one to three business days, and the Thanksgiving closure. U.S. Copyright Office Circular 1, Copyright Basics, read August 2026, for the three month registration window and for registration being required before an infringement suit. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Writers and Authors (SOC 27-3043), median $72,270, May 2024, which excludes people working for themselves. Dated September 2026.