It’s tough being a starving artist…. Or a starving writer for that matter.

Then again it always has been. Publishing seems to go through this cyclical lament of the loss of the glory days every other year or so. “The market is fragmented!” “People are too occupied with TV, video games, and DVDs!” “Even the big authors are not selling!”

Perhaps, perhaps not. Keep in mind that most of the big authors we worship as the giants upon which the industry is built starved just as much as today’s small-to-midlist authors. Hell, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book royalties for 1932 and 1933 combined equaled out to a measly $50. That sucks even by Depression standards. And keep in mind that he had already published The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise by then. Bukowski, for all his bravado and debauchery, made sure his ass was at the post office everyday, on time, so he could keep a steady paycheck rolling in. Kurt Vonnegut worked in a PR firm in Schenectady, NY while writing Player Piano. He quit in 1951 to write full-time but still worked day jobs that included running a car dealership and the lowest of the low for an author — writing ad copy. Whenever I hear someone complain about not having enough time to write or not having a means to “focus on the art,” I love to throw “Yeah, but Vonnegut wrote PR copy” back at them.
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