Nicolas ColeCo-Founder Ship 30 for 30, Premium Ghostwriting Academy

Nobody Makes A Living As A Writer

11 Feb 2026 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:23

In this solo YouTube talk, Nicolas Cole challenges the common cliché that writers cannot make a living. He explains that the perception stems from the low retail price of books (typically $20), the lack of recurring revenue since most readers buy a book only once, and the standard royalty structure where authors receive about 10% of the sale price—roughly $2 per book. Cole argues that these economic factors, not a lack of talent or demand, create the myth that writing is an unprofitable career, and he suggests that the cliché is misleading.

The reason why there's the whole cliche, nobody makes a living as a writer is because of course, it's going to be hard to make a living as a writer when the thing that you're selling is priced at $20. There's no recurring revenue. Most people buy a book once, they don't buy it again. And then your deal in that is you get 10% of the revenue. So you're not even getting all $20. Right? You're getting $2. So then that leads to the cliche, well, nobody makes a living as a writer. Right. And that's wrong.