Paid by the Word

A New Guide for your Writing Career

There was a time when publishing your own novel was considered pitiable—the last resort of the untalented.

Luckily for all of us, that's not the case anymore. Thanks largely to Amazon and its pioneering of Kindle Direct Publishing, any author with a dream and a word processor can put their outstanding books in the hands of eager readers, maybe even make a whole career from their creativity.

The opportunity is there for the taking, but one of the first things you learn as an indie author is that you are in fact independent. You're all on your own. That means you have to pay for everything that a publisher would normally pay for. Editing, cover design, advertising, sometimes even book reviews. The list of expenses can get lengthy and for an author just starting off with their first book, it can seem an insurmountable barrier.

If you're working a regular day job, perhaps one that pays you less than the national median of $70,000 a year, how exactly are you supposed to find this money and pu…