I’ve often wondered about it and this thread prompted me to ask.
In an interview, Edward Abby once claimed that he was able to live the rest of his life off of the proceeds of his book Desert Solitaire. Now granted he didn’t a very extravagant lifestyle.
According to Wiki, JDS wrote these books (along with a handful of later stories): The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Nine Stories (1953) Franny and Zooey (1961) Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
His history doesn’t seem to indicate family money yet he was able to live nicely as a recluse. But I read over and over how to make money writing you must keep doing it. Was Catcher that successful?
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Oh, heck yes, it was that successful Think about how it was quickly moved into English classes and it’s status as a late-20th century classic. Alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, few single books have done as well to set an author up.
Reminds of Norman Greenbaum, who only had one hit song Spirit in the Skybut can basically live off the royalties because that song gets rediscovered every few years and used in commercials and movies…
An author usually continues to recieve royalties as long as a book stays in print and continues to sell, so it’s possible that one best-selling book could support an author for the rest of his or her life. Edward Abbey also said, sometime around 1985, that except for his first novel all his books remained in print and continued to sell at an unspectacular but steady rate. He said at that time his income for the past 10 years or so had averaged around $20,000 annually. Not bad for the time, but certainly not vast wealth. He supplemented that by lecturing and teaching writing classes at a couple of colleges. Of course, as Abbey pointed out he also had to support several ex-wives and 5 children. And being Edward Abbey, he no doubt had a sizeable bar tab
James Michener, who worked in publishing before becoming a writer pointed out an interesting case. His company had rights to a high-school textbook that was used in schools all across the country. It had been written 70 years or so ago, had been revised and reprinted several times. Both authors were long dead, but their heirs were still receiving huge annual royalty checks. In fact these heirs were making more money that all but one or two of the company’s top-selling novelists.
Same thing sometimes happens in the music world. There are several one-hit-wonder singer/songwriters around whose royalties continue to provide a comfortable living long after they have become has-beens. It helps if the song has stayed popular and has been covered by other contemporary artists.
SS
And spread out over 60 years, that works out to about $250,000 a year. So yeah, assuming he didn’t have any extravagant tastes or a really expensive drug habit, he would have been able to live fairly well in rural New Hampshire on that.
In ANY area of art or entertainment, it’s often interesting to see who’s made a lot of money and who’s broke. Interesting because, sometimes, you’ll find a one-hit wonder who’s living in a mansion, while another person who had a long string of successes is living in squalor.
Sometimes, that means the one-hit wonder had the good sense or good fortune to make wise investments, while the more successful artist blew it all on booze, drugs or high living. But other times, it’s because the one-hit wonder’s work had some staying power, which means it continued to get exposure and continued to sell long after it was released, while the more successful act’s work HASN’T continued to sell over the long haul. To use one example, Don McLean didn’t have much more commercial success in the Seventies than the Bay City Rollers. The difference is, the few hits he had are still staples of soft rock radio, and have been covered successfully by other artists (like Madonna). The Bay City Rollers, however, haven’t sold anything since the late Seventies.
Books that become part of “the canon” required reading at thousands of high schools and colleges) sell steadily every year. J.D. Salinger had many contemporaries who wrote books that sold about as well as “Catcher In the Rye,” but whose books are largely forgotten or haven’t sold well in 50+ years. But high school kids are required to buy “Catcher,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “lord of the Flies,” and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” every fall… which means Salinger. Harper Lee, William Golding and Maya Angelou got to live pretty comfortably.
Getting your work into a textbook or as required reading is the ideal for authors. It means long-term, regular payments.
Even successful authors have trouble making a living with their books. And critical reputation ebbs and falls – Philip K. Dick’s estate seems to be doing very well these days, as his books are not only in print, but also being made into movies, yet during his lifetime he struggled mightily (Jerry Pournelle has said he was reduced to eating dog food).
Willis Alan Ramsey created one perfect LP back in Cosmic Cowboy Days. Other artists covered his tunes—most notoriously, Captain & Tennille turned an amusing throw-away (“Muskrat Candlelight”) into a giant hit & annoying earworm as “Muskrat Love.”
Royalties allowed him to live in the British Isles for years. He’s now back in the USA, writing & apparently planning another album, someday. But there’s no hurry…
Of course, in the recording industry it’s also just as likely a one-hit-wonder’s riches will be quickly exhausted by ethically-challenged managers, creative accounting, and standard record-company chicanery. Not that it doesn’t happen but I get the feeling that per capita, the incidents of writers driven to bankruptcy as a result of being short-changed and cheated by their agents and publishing companies is a lot lower.
Philip K. Dick told that story about buying dog food about himself, so Jerry Pournelle is just quoting Dick if he’s telling it now. Dick’s stories about his life can’t entirely be trusted. Kleo Mini, the woman that Dick was married to at that point, says that they weren’t really that badly off. She was working, and he was making some money by his writing. They were frugal in their living habits, but they weren’t really desperately poor. She says that one way they decided to save money was by going to pet food stores (which are the only place to buy horse meat). They would occasionally eat horse meat steaks. They are cheaper than normal steaks and taste just as good (or so some people claim).
Absolutely…it’s not uncommon to hear stories of recording artists (especially from the 1950s through 1970s) who sold a lot of records, but never saw much money from it, due to the standard contracts which most of them had signed with their record companies, giving the record company most of the rights (and most of the profits).
The big guys like the Beatles had the leverage to regain control of their music (and benefit from the sales), but I think that they were the exceptions to the rule in those day.
One of his short stories (“Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut”) was adapted into the moderately popular 1949 film My Foolish Heart and he had three Spanish language films adapted from other short stories; some of these movies had to pay him something. There’s also an unauthorized Iranian movie based on one of his stories, so who knows? I’m sure My Foolish Heart inspired the infamous “Living out in Hollywood, working as a prostitute” line from Catcher.
Harper Lee was in the news recently - she died or something, didn’t she? - anyway, she (or someone in the story I read) stated outright that To Kill A Mockingbird earned her enough money that she didn’t need to work for the rest of her life. And she didn’t.
According to the most recent Simpsons ep, J.D. Salinger also wrote the “unauthorized guide” to the forgotten 80’s sitcom Thicker than Waters, so that probably helped some in the later years too.
