Judith Tarr talks about money, the way things are changing, and how things were when she got started in a three part blog post: http://mizkit.com/escaping-stockholm-part-1/
Seriously fascinating stuff!
I was a little surprised at the $$'s for a midlist author in the 80s and 90s. I would have thought the numbers would have been higher. Bleah!
Thomas K Carpenter
SFx2, SHMx1, HMx12 (Pro'd Out - Q4 2016)
EQMM - Feb 2015 /
My experiences were quite different from Judy's, then and now, but what she covers is pretty accurate, including the generalizations. I'd say that $90,000 was a -high- midlist year's income back then. I still remember a Publisher's Weekly survey , circa the mid-1980s, that showed that the average writer made something like $2,300 a year -- and that was including Stephen King, James Michener, Tom Clancy, and that whole crowd.
-- Mike Resnick
Hugo & Nebula multi-award winner
Writers of the Future Contest Judge
