For the Self-Employed Author

Well it's tax season.  Ick.  There's nothing quite so emotionally draining as handing all your hard-earned money off to the government.  Yes, loved ones could pass away.  But that's a different type of grief from what you experience bottoming out your car in a pothole that no one has bothered to fix with said tax dollars.

But I digress.

One thing short story authors really struggle with is money spent on cover art.  When cracking out a new story every week or month, it's simply not practical to spend $300 on every cover unless you're making gobs of money from some other job that you have.

BUT... good quality cover art can make you money.  People are shallow.  I'm shallow.  You're shallow.  Do you really want to spend $2.99 on a romance with a cover that looks like this?



No.

Would you spend money on a book that had a cover that looked like this?



Come on.  He's wearing a loin cloth!  How could any woman resist that?

Point being that while the story inside may be the same, your assumptions going in and even your very decision to buy the story is based off a one second glance at the cover.  So this is not something to just gloss over, even for a short story you plan on selling at 99 cents.

And on top of that, cover art can be a tax write-off.  If you're making enough in sales to merit reporting it to the government, any expenses you have as a self-employed author can give you a reduction in taxes.

Note: I'm not a tax professional.  You should definitely consult with yours about this.

All I want to point out is the bigger picture.  Don't immediately think, "Oh there's no way I can afford a $75 cover for this story."  Consider all the aspects.  If you're writing the story anyway and publishing it as an ebook, it will be up for sale forever.  Giving the story a professional front will increase the likelihood that someone will buy.  Cover art is not just a superflous expense, it's an office supply and, therefore, a potential tax write-off.  As a writer it's part of your business.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of "Ferryman" by Nigel Edwards

Summary: "A mythology grew up around the Ferrymen, fostered by a mystique which they wrapped around themselves. Some thought them amoral servants of a ruling elite, sanctioned to undertake work beyond legitimate resolution; others with more fanciful imaginations – or who were more devout, depending on your point of view – believed them emissaries of Evil, with a capital E." Could the Ferrymen become real in your lifetime? Should they? Read this thoughtful and disturbing near-future science fiction story and decide for yourself. Review: This was a fantastic short story.  "Well-written" doesn't even begin to describe Ferryman ; it's engrossing.  The simple, clean style perfectly highlights our precise  protagonist.  If this future Edwards presents to us does in fact become a reality, the character he describes is exactly the type of person who would become a Ferryman: highly competent with the hint of a god complex. What's  especially clever abou...
Read more

The Short Story Project

I was introduced to the short story genre in high school and simply fell in love.  It's completely different from reading a novel.  A novel is a lengthy involvement.  Character development and plot must transport you into the author's world as the story gradually unfolds. Short stories are distinct experience.  A good short story writer will make you care about the outcome of the characters even though you may not necessarily know anything about them.  It is a complete experience in one sitting; not too unlike reading a poem.  You read the short story/poem for itself and not for the hope that it will drag out for 800 pages and then maybe have a sequel. The short story genre has become a lost art.  When newspapers were at their height, a writer could make a name for himself by publishing a short piece of fiction every week.  Charles Dickens is a perfect example of this.  Since then, the literary world changed.  You have to have an age...
Read more

Interview with Author Hugh Howey

Welcome to Book Brouhaha! Why don't you start out by introducing yourself and telling us a little about "Wool." Thanks for having me, Alain! I suppose I'm just this normal guy who just wrote a little story called Wool. It's about a group of people who live underground. When their society turns on itself, it threatens all of mankind. In a way, it poses the conundrum of every revolution: How do you destroy an unjust social structure without the collateral damage being worse than the injustices were? I suppose the most interesting thing about me, personally, is that I lived on a sailboat while I was in college. This led to a career as a yacht captain, which sent me all over the Caribbean and the East Coast. I didn't start writing in earnest until my wife dragged me away from the sea and into the mountains. I've always loved the short form. I've been told that it isn't as marketable, even though science fiction has a long and glorious history of c...
Read more