“So I sold my book for $100,000, and what I received was a check for about $21,000 a year over the course of four years, and I paid a third of that to the IRS. Don't get me wrong, the book deal helped a lot -- it was like getting a grant every year for four years. But it wasn't enough to live off.”— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com
“I had accrued $50,000 in credit card debt to write that book. The same thing happened later with 'Wild', only I was in deeper debt. So I got that check for 'Torch', and it was gone the next day. I actually paid my credit card bill. Poof!”— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com
“I feel strongly that we're only hurting ourselves as writers by being so secretive about money. There's no other job in the world where you get your master's degree in that field and you're like, 'Well, I might make zero or I might make $5 million!'”— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com
“Writing for free looked like work. It felt like work. But it was the illusion of work, a fun house mirror reflection.”— Nina Maclaughlin, amazon.com
“The dreamy writer's life I had envisioned in graduate school, crafted by borrowing my more experienced classmates' lofty expectations as well as my tuition funds, seemed inevitable. Six months later, my novel had been rejected by what seemed like every editor in New York City, I was being paid less…”— Julia Fierro, amazon.com
“Today, I own approximately three thousand books. I have gone into debt buying books and made poor financial choices, again and again, for the love of books -- buying a stack of glossy-covered novels instead of paying off bills, binge-ordering a dozen buzzed-about novels online instead of putting mon…”— Julia Fierro, amazon.com