How else can children's authors earn a living from writing?

Learn more about ghost writing, copywriting, reading schemes and packagers

Is it your dream to get a children’s story published? It’s such an amazing feeling holding a copy of your book in your hands and we’ve shared lots of resources here to help you make that dream into a reality.

However, whilst it feels incredible seeing a book you’ve written on a a bookshelf, it’s important to know that most authors will also need another job.

We explained in this post that the average author in the UK makes just £7000 a year and as you can see from the breakdown of my income last year I supplemented my writing income with other related work including editing, mentoring and doing events.

The good news though is that writing is a transferable skill and there are other ways children’s authors can make money within the publishing industry which don’t fall under the traditional have-an idea-for-a-book, write-it and get-it-published format.

From ghost writing and reading schemes to packagers and copywriting. I’m going to share a little more about what all of these are, how they work and how to get involved.

First let’s talk about money

For each piece of writing you do, you will be offered a contract. If you have an agent, they will check the terms for you and hopefully negotiate you a better deal. They will also take a percentage of any money earned from writing. (A good agent will never take any money from you upfront.)

Often a contract will be for an advance against royalties, I explain what this is detail here. However sometimes a contract will be for a flat fee. This means you get a one off amount for writing something and won’t receive any royalties or subsidiary rights income for it in the future.

Personally my preference is always for an advance and royalties but I have written books for a flat fee too, after all, writers have bills to pay just like everyone else.

So without further ado, let’s look at some of the other ways children’s authors can supplement their income and still use their writing skills:

Ghost writing

This isn’t something I’ve done personally but several of my friends have. The idea is that a celebrity is paired with an author and they write a book together which is sometimes inspired by the field the celebrity is famous for.