It is possible to make money as an author

And you don't need to hit the NYT bestseller list to do so

Hi friend,

My first book, THE YEAR OF LESS, turned 8 last week. 🥳

It was published in hardcover on January 16, 2018—and the minute it was out of my hands, it went on a journey beyond anything I’d dreamed of. To celebrate, I decided to collect some data. I don’t write about personal finance much anymore, but I still love numbers! Just for fun (and because I know some of you are hopeful writers), I thought I might share them with you…

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• THE YEAR OF LESS has sold over 300,000 copies in English

  • 55,000+ in physical books (hardcover + paperback)

  • ~250,000 in a digital format (ebook + audiobook, which have sold over 100,000 each)

  • Audio makes up the largest piece of the pie¹ 👀

• My original advance was $35,000 USD + $10,000 USD for the audio (a separate deal from a second publisher). Enough copies sold that I earned out both advances within six months, and started earning royalties right away (royalties = a small amount of money for every copy sold)

• The book has been translated into 12 other languages, a couple of which are still being translated/haven’t been released yet

  • Enough copies have sold in 7 of those languages that I’ve earned out the advances from their publishers and am now earning royalties from them too. If you’re curious, they are: simplified + traditional Chinese (2), German, Polish, Russian, Turkish, and Brazilian Portuguese

• In English, it’s best year for sales was the year it was first published: 2018 (87,000 copies across all formats)

  • It’s “worst”/lowest year was 2022 (17,000 copies across all formats)

  • It has consistently gone up and up, since 2022—perhaps following the cost of living crisis, politics, and the global economy…? 👀

  • It’s second-best year was 2025 (42,000+ copies in just the first six months of the year—and I only have data to June 30th, 2025!)

• It’s hard to calculate exactly how much I’ve earned from this book, because I get paid in USD, then exchanged it into Canadian dollars (when I was still living there) and now British pounds (since 2022). But I’ve been trying to calculate it in Canadian dollars and keep track of that every year, because I’m Canadian first! So I’ll start with that number, then compare it to the other currencies via today’s exchange rate:

  • Since 2016 (when I got the book deal), I have earned over $350,000 CAD / $253,000 USD / $188,000 for THE YEAR OF LESS

  • Spread out over 9 years (got the book deal in July 2016 and only have data to June 2025), that’s an average of $38,888 CAD / $28,111 USD / £20,888 per year

• And my initial sales + success helped me get a six-figure book deal (in USD) for my second book, ADVENTURES IN OPTING OUT. So between my two books, I’ve earned ~$480,000 CAD / $347,000 USD / £258,000²

  • Over 9 years, that’s an average of $53,333 CAD / $38,555 USD / £28,666 per year

  • My three highest earning years were 2018-2020 (though I’m very curious to see what the data is from the second-half of 2025! Won’t have all of those numbers until June 2026…)

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I’ve been looking at these numbers for days, wondering if there was a “story” here. There are certainly a number of milestones I could celebrate. But are there any takeaways I can offer readers? Especially for the hopeful writers who read this?

I’ve known I was nearing the $500,000 (CAD)-mark in earnings and wondered if that might be the story. Kind of like when people write posts about how they earn six figures on Substack, or through their niche online business, etc. Soon, I’ll be able to say: “I’ve earned half a million dollars from two books.” But that’s not interesting to me, because it can’t be replicated. (This is also how I feel about those posts: they can’t be replicated, so it’s not helpful. The only person they do help is the writer who puts them behind a paywall or makes a course about it, and continues to earn more money each time someone wants the “secret formula.” Ohhh, the great pyramid scheme of the internet!)

The reason I say it can’t be replicated is because I know an extremely unique combination of time + experience + skill + luck is what decides any book’s outcome. I believe writer’s work hard and try to write the best book they can at that time. I also know we all have our own backgrounds, starting with our educations (mine includes writing and A LOT of media training, which would’ve helped with all the interviews and events I did for TYOL). I also had a popular blog with a “large audience³” of loyal readers I’d spent 8 years connecting with online, before the book came out—and I know many of them were huge supporters of it.

As for the luck? Well, that’s out of our hands—and is in the hands of our readers. The agents and publishers who think we might have a book in us. The people who buy it and read it and love it and share it. The people who see it get shared and decide they need to read it. The people who connect so deeply with your words, they then want to read everything else you’ve written. You might get lucky and have a big publication, or someone with a big audience, choose to share it. You might do one interview that happens to go viral. And you might, as seems to be the case with TYOL, write a book that hits a cultural moment and goes viral again—7 years after it first came out.

Something my agent says is that the topic of your book should be both timely and timeless. It should also have a universal theme, but be told through a unique point of view. I suppose what happened last year shows that TYOL might fit that bill. But I still can’t, and won’t even try to, tell you how to write books that might earn you half a million dollars in advances and royalties. My experience with TYOL can’t be replicated. If it could be, I would’ve had the same experience with my second book—and I didn’t! (It also came out during the pandemic and got lost in the sea of it all…)

But that’s not the story here.

I think the real story is in the data. It’s the story I get to tell whenever someone asks what I do for work. After telling them I’m a writer and answering the questions about what I write (“I’ve published two nonfiction books”), there is the question about what else I do… aka, how I make money.

“Well, my first book was actually somewhat successful,” I say, usually quite sheepishly. “It makes up a good portion of my income each year.”

I don’t share this with most people, friend. Because sometimes I still don’t feel worthy of it. Because I know it’s not true for so many other wonderful authors. And because I can’t explain exactly how or why it happened to me. But it’s true: THE YEAR OF LESS still pays most of my bills.

It’s also 8 years old. It was never a NYT bestseller. And lots of people haven’t even heard of it—or me. That’s what feels interesting…

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In the world of book publishing, you often hear stories of two extremes: about the books that are huge bestsellers and the authors who get rich and become household names—and the cautionary tales about why writing books isn’t a plausible career path. On this end of the scale, we’re told “most books don’t sell enough copies to earn out their advances” and “you’ll never make money as a writer.” One author I love frequently says something I hate on her podcast: “nonfiction doesn’t sell.”

I don’t know where this narrative comes from. Maybe it is in the data. Or maybe it’s one of those stories that has been passed down since the beginning of publishing. (And if so: who came up with it, and when, and why?) Or maybe it’s because so many authors are self-deprecating, lol. Or maybe it’s just been true of enough people’s experiences that they don’t want to promise hope where hope isn’t often found. I don’t know, friend.

What I do know is that this isn’t my experience. And I don’t think the story about wanting to be an author has to be one of two extremes, where you’re either a successful/rich bestseller or a failing/starving artist. There are other options in the middle, where you might actually earn a median salary from your books. That’s where I live—and when I look around at the authors I follow, I suspect it’s where many more writers are in this industry.

In the middle, there’s just enough money coming in to ease the pressure of having to take on too much work. But just enough that you do have to work/make some money in other ways. Sometimes, a royalty payment comes through and it’s not enough money to live on. And sometimes, a royalty payment comes through and it’s much more than you were expecting. “That’s three/four/five months of my expenses covered!” you get to say, and feel relieved and grateful for the weight this takes off your shoulders, and the newfound space it creates for you to write in. The middle isn’t always an easy place to live, but it isn’t always hard either. It keeps you humble—and motivated.

The middle ground of this industry is a beautiful place to be. I don’t know why we don’t talk about it more often⁴. Or maybe I should just say: I don’t know why I haven’t talked about it more… but I’d like to. I’d like to be an open book about it, and a safe person for other authors to talk to.

I can’t tell you how to make money from your books. I can’t tell you what to write, or how to market it, or promise you any kind of success. But I can tell you that it is possible to make money as an author, friend. It’s possible for nonfiction to sell. It’s possible for a book to support you financially without being a NYT bestseller, without being a BIG book club pick, without winning awards, and so on. Sometimes that support is slow, cumulative, and uneven—but it all adds up. It’s real.

And it’s possible.

xx Cait

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Thank you for reading this little newsletter of mine. I’ve been writing online since 2010, and have always valued keeping my content clean (aka free of ads/sponsored content) so we can be present together. If you found calm, joy or inspiration from this, you can: like this post (click on the heart button), subscribe to read more or buy me a coffee! ❤️☕

1. I got to record my own audiobook, and still think that’s the most fun I’ve ever had “at work” before!

2. Please note: all of these amounts are what I’ve earned after paying my agent’s commission (15% of your earnings, which is industry standard). So the actual amounts are a bit higher, I just get 85% of it!

3. I don’t love this word, but it’s the one publishers will be asking about. “Do you have an audience?” Yes, I did. I just preferred to call them online friends!

4. Hat tip to Kelton Wright for sharing that Laura McKowen also shared how much she earned from her first book, and on the same day I published this! She includes more data about book sales in the US, which some of you might want to read.