Ways in Which I've Earned Money "As a Writer"

The Instagram algorithm has worked out for me. Chronically betrayed by what Twitter thought I would enjoy (hate speech) and Facebook thought I would enjoy (ads), I have been gifted a nearly perfect Instagram algorithm. Angry foster kittens being rehabilitated and finding their forever homes, dance clips from the most interesting parts of ballets, a woman on a quest for a discontinued crayon, more cats, a day in the life of a potter, sassy cooking how-tos, people renovating their homes in an irreverent manner, a guy who does voices for the figures in famous paintings. It’s all perfect for me, and a nice little brain vacation when I need five minutes off from anything that matters. Or ten minutes.

Sometimes I just let the feed take me where it’s going but sometimes I actually follow these folks and then it turns out that that these whimsical bits of fluff are often people’s FULL-TIME JOBS. Sometimes after getting many many updates on their whimsical lifestyles, I unfollow, but sometimes I do enjoy seeing it all. A lot of these content creators eventually get around to posting a “how I make money as a content creator” video, and honestly it is very interesting—I guess a lot of people find it so because these videos are popular. Making money on the internet is a tricky business, and there are lots of little niches and twists and turns, and each creator does it a bit differently. I have monetized nothing on the internet and have my doubts I ever could, but I am enthralled nonetheless.

The ubiquity of this format make me wonder about doing a version of it about writing—maybe people would find that interesting too? The difference of course is that writing (content creation in written form???) is not my full-time job. First in my heart, and often in my mind, but not on my tax return. But I do make money at it, not that much, but enough that it DOES get on that tax return. So, it’s a little bit of a coup right there, because it’s hard even get to this stage, paltry though it might be. So I thought I’d share. For what it’s worth.

A few notes: Because I do have (have to have) a full-time job, I have the dubious luxury of mainly doing what I choose writing-wise. I don’t hustle for writing work beyond publications (which I do try reasonably hard for)—everything I else, I sort of take as it comes. If this work were how I ate, it would be a different story. Also, this is everything that has ever netted me any money ever in my entire career—this is not representative of a single year. I try to clarify the regular stuff versus the freak one-offs but just a blanket statement upfront.

Ok, go: How I Have Made Monday “As a Writer”

1) First Serial Rights: publishing a story/essay/article/etc. in a magazine or journal. You sell the right of first publication and all subsequent rights revert to you after (sometimes with a slight delay, like 6 months or a 100 days). These fees haven’t been huge for me, but are always nice and welcome, plus the glory of the publication.

2) Second Serial Rights: this is publishing something that has already been published a second time, often in an anthology or sometimes a textbook, and then the rights once again revert to you. This has only happened to me a couple times and the money has been pretty minimal, but it’s still a sweet deal because I didn’t have to do any new work and just got paid a second time.

3) Advances: This is the chunk of money you get up front when a publishing company agrees to publish your book. It’s often divided into three—on signing, on manuscript submission or perhaps manuscript approval, and on publication. This is an “advance against royalties” (the percentage of actual book sales an author gets) and thus often the largest single wad of money I’ve received for a book at one time.

4) Royalties: If you sell enough books to cover your advance (“earning out”) and then some, you start getting paid real royalties, which has happened to me but not that often, and not in large amounts. Still, it’s money in the mail, often when I’m not expecting it, and it’s great.

5) Public Lending Right and Access Copyright: These are fees sent out by the government for having my books in libraries and by the Access Copyright organization for having my books photocopied and scanned. These are both ways of compensating authors for having their works more publicly shared, and are so valued and appreciated.

6) Film Options: These are little-understood outside the industry but are a neat thing. They are basically an amount of money paid by a film production company to an author to hold onto the possibility of making a work into a film. They are renewable with more money, and completely non-binding—the option might never lead to a contract for an actual film, or lead anywhere at all. But it’s still money for a writer and very nice. When this first happened to me I was ready to go down to the multiplex and see the movie in a year, but it ended up being decade of options and no movie. The money was fun though.

7) Film Rights, theatrical rights, audio rights, translation rights, etc.: If someone actually buys your work to MAKE a movie, you get money for that as well, completely separate from the option. Ditto any other format that was not included in your original contract. I’ve had a short film, two translations, a play, and an audiobook, and the best part of all these things were the things themselves—all SO COOL—but also there were varying sums of money involved.

😎 Grants: grants exist at the federal, provincial and—depending on where you live, sometimes municipal level. I’ve held grants at all of these levels at various points, all to support creation of new work. They can also be offered for travel or promotion, by these same orgs, as well as by organizations for a particular type of work, for translation, and a host of other things, but I’ve never had those types. Grants can help a lot at the right time to support writing time.

9) Prizes: As distinct from grants, prizes are just given to an existing work because the jury liked it—nothing further is expected. I did once win a prize early in my career, but the more recent prizes were all about being short-listed and not winning, but still getting a little something. I still very much appreciated it.

NOTE: I put “As a Writer” in quotation marks in the title because some work is done because I am a writer but is not, itself, writing. We have now arrived at that portion of the list.

10) Juries: I’ve been on a couple granting juries, which was paid work. I have also been on writing contest juries, which is generally not paid, at least in my experience. I was trying to think if I ever got anything besides lunch for my prize jury efforts, and I recalled way way back when I was a first-reader (not a judge, just a read-everything lower-tier person) for the CBC short-story prize, that paid and pretty ok at that. Usually it is just lunch and glory though.

11) Teaching: I teach a tiny bit, very rarely, and am generally paid for my efforts (not 100% of the time, by my own choice). But because of this, I do know that teaching is a HARD JOB and although you might need to be a writer to be a good writing teacher (or you at least need some experience writing, I’m not quite sure where the line is) if you are working with students you are WORKING AS A TEACHER and that is where you’d better focus. You occasionally run into writers who view teaching work as a grant they don’t need to work for, and those people are jerks.

12) Readings and panel discussions: At festivals, at reading series, at schools/universities/colleges, at bookclubs occasionally. Not all readings/panels are paid, but some are—it’s really really random, as far as I can tell, which is why is always wise to check. I have had almost every experience you can think of, from the sublime to the ridiculous, but I do get paid for readings/panels sometimes, which is fun.

There’s even more stuff some writers do that I have either not been asked to do or just don’t have as a skill in my wheelhouse. I have never been asked to moderate a panel for some reason, and I almost never do paid reviewing because I find it too hard. I have never been a writer-in-residence anywhere because the time commitment is usually too great and I have never monetized anything on the internet because I love give it all away for free too much and cannot restrain myself. And I have not included any type of editorial work here because I think it is a different skillset, though I and many writers have both. I also have not explored all the niches and intricacies of a lot of the above simply because I don’t know them—I’m not a very big deal and I’m sure a LOT of other stuff goes on that I have no idea about. But it is interesting, I think, that there are so many ways to earn money and I do think people are interested in money stuff so I wanted to open it up. What did I miss? Which of these are not working as well in 2025 as they used to? Which are improving (If any???)