Admitting You’d Like To Earn Money With Your Writing

This is a funny one.

For many writers, one of their goals is to earn money with their writing. They may not be interested in earning enough for a full-time living, but they’d like to earn something:

• Doing some freelance work
• Having a short story published in a magazine
• Self-publishing their novel or non-fiction book
• Blogging
• Selling a book to a traditional publisher
• Etc.

But this may make their writing feel less… pure. After all, when you are writing for money, there are other things to consider than when you are writing for the sole purpose of creative expression or to share something meaningful with the world.

However, that doesn’t mean that earning money and creative expression are mutually exclusive. They aren’t, but you do have to do some exploring to find out where they intersect for you.

But back to the “purity” of your writing. Admitting that you’d like to write for money can make you feel a little dirty or a little icky. For starters, you’re going to have to sell it, promote yourself, market it. And doesn’t that involve repeatedly yelling to everyone around you, “Buy my book!” (or the equivalent)? Isn’t that going to be pushy? Or aggressive? Or downright manipulative?

Well, no. When done appropriately, it means taking some time to explore the intersection of what you enjoy and what is needed by other people (i.e., there is a market for it) and then building relationships (of a professional kind, this can be confusing for people) and communicating to them about what you have and why it helps them.

Now, none of that is easy, but it doesn’t involve repeatedly yelling, “Buy my book!” and you do not have to be aggressive about it. You can be a gentle (but assertive) marketer. 🙂

And maybe the biggest roadblock of all is the idea that we actually have something of value to sell. That something we write will be desired enough that people will open their wallets and give us their hard-earned cash for it. That we are “arrogant” enough to think that. (That’s not truly arrogance, btw.)

Money is an emotional topic, and when combined with writing (weirdly, another emotional topic), it can be truly explosive in our own psyches.

But stop and think that you may have something in you that people will pay for. Gladly. And it will help them so much that they will come back for more. Over and over again.

How do you feel about earning money with your writing? Challenges? Successes? Mindset shifts? Let me know in the comments below. 🙂

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Amanda Linehan is an Independent Author, Coach, and INFP. She is the author of Productivity for INFPs: How To Be Productive Within Your Natural Rhythms and has published 16 titles since 2012, including five novels. Since 2017, she has run her author business full-time. Get exclusive access to her INF Summitt Interview on fiction writing, self-publishing, and being self-employed by joining the For INFPs newsletter here.