It’s hard to give advice even to people you are close to. I think just a little encouragement goes a long way. You are certainly not obliged to answer every question asked of you.

You can figure it out for yourself to some extent, especially in ebooks. You look at the cover price of a book in the word range you are aiming for from the house you want to work with, you multiply it by the percentage the publisher offers the writer (a lot of them have that on their info pages) and VOILA you get a “net per sale” for you.

Then you take that “net per sale” and use it to figure out how much gross income you need in order to make the amount of money you need, factoring in taxes.

You can’t use someone else’s sales numbers anyway - they depend so heavily on popularity of author, of genre, of publishing house plus how well things are publicized, etc.

And there’s a basic understanding needed that sales fluxuate and you have to keep producing to keep new income coming in as older works taper off.

At least, this is what *I* did to figure out how many sales I’d need to make to generate the income I wanted.

sorry - my ex-business major is showing, huh?

I hate when people ask for advice from me, because I am afraid I am going to say the wrong thing, or influence them the wrong way. And if it turns out wrong for them, then I am the one at fault. But that is just me.

Personally, I think advice should come from sources dedicated to those types of questions, like critique groups and workshops. I want you to write Shi, and by that, I don’t want you writing an advice column - LOL. I want more Hunters. There might come a time later on when you might hold a writing contest or something to help aspiring writers, but until then, I still want those Hunters.

The money question bothers me. Makes me think the person is not serious about writing.

I’ll add my vote for the awesome cover (got The Huntress & Hunter’s Pride yesterday!)

Asking me to read something, that’s happened a handful of times and it’s not really an imposition, it’s just… I suck at giving the sort of help they seem to want.

Jana, reading is just hard me any more. I don’t read much any more for enjoyment, but that’s not even all of the problem. A lot of my problem is, I’m not always the nicest person and I’m more worried about hurting somebody’s feelings with a reading. Writing is hard and just finishing something takes courage and should be applauded. And I know some people who have some serious talent and they just don’t write anymore because somebody didn’t exactly approach a critique sort of thing with the right attitude. I don’t want to be responsible for doing that.

Jennifer, Silma, SL Carpenter did that cover… he’s seriously talented.

And Maura, you’d be AMAZED at how many people ask that sort of thing.

Id I was a more… ahh… tactful person, or a teaching type, maybe I wouldn’t get so nervous about people asking for advice, but eh… I’m not. I prefer bluntness to tact and I’m one of those people who sit in awe of people who understand the technical ins and outs of writing, so I can’t really help with teaching/critiques either.

I think that pubs are so willing to help unpubs because it was a pub that might have given them the spark or advice or the encouragment that they needed to get to the next level and it is so great to give back.

Oh yeah….Jennifer is right your cover rocks

If I ever finish the stories running around in my head I promise not to ask you for advice. I would however hope you liked what I wrote.

Seriously, I think most published writers are enormously patient and go far beyond the call of any sort of duty when it comes to being hit up by the unpublished newbies (of which *I* am one, so I can call them that).

However, I do think unpublished writers should be merciful and not explode with questions and pop quizes at any opportunity. I just cannot imagine why someone (out of the blue) thinks you will disclose your income and how they might think you have time to read their work just out of the blue.

Seems sorta … like an imposition.