Dissecting my writing income

Warning: Incoming tea spillage!

Welcome to the free newsletter of David (D. V.) Bishop, author of the Cesare Aldo historical thrillers set in Renaissance Italy. This time I’m making a deep dive into my income from writing and related activities to see what it shows…

A rarely discussed topic

Money is a topic some folk feel uncomfortable discussing. This may be a British thing – people across the Atlantic are often a lot more open/brash (delete as you think appropriate) about the subject. But I’m not from round these parts, so I decided it might be helpful to peer behind the scenes into the detail on my income from writing.

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

I’ve dissected my self-employed revenue from the last six tax years, so what follows spans April 2019 to April 2025. The first of those years, 2019-2020, is when I started earning money for my Cesare Aldo historical thrillers so seemed a good start point. The 2024-2025 tax year ends later this week, so data for that isn’t completely exact.

One final caveat: I have redacted actual numbers from the graphs you’ll find below. Those details are between me, my agent, HMRC and my accountant. Yes, I have an accountant as it is a job which I would rather have somebody else do. Dealing with His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs department is not my idea of fun in any way.

Lastly, the graphs exclude income from my part-time job as a university lecturer. Like many writers, I don’t make enough from my creative endeavours alone to support me – not with the consistency of a job. I make no apologies for having a salary job while writing on the side. Hell, I’m essentially working two jobs, there’s no shame in that.

Right, it’s time to stop dipping a timid toe into this topic and get stuck in….

How do I make money as a writer?

My writing generates income from a range of activities and sources. Some are money for new or future work – such as advance payments for my Aldo historical thrillers – while others are payments of various kinds for past work. These all vary year to year, so I will break them down further.

As this pie chart demonstrates, over the past six tax years the majority of my income has been advances for writing my Aldo novels – 71%, in fact. My next largest earner was comics work, a mix of new commissions and reprint fees for old work. Most of that 11% is from the current tax year, which is distorting this chart a little.

After that there is 6% from self-publishing. I have two non-fiction books which sell exclusively as Kindle ebooks; one is an unofficial guide to Inspector Morse, while the other covers British war comic Battle. The Morse book did well for me over the years but, with the prequel series Endeavour concluded, these sales are fading.

I now get royalties from sales of my first two Aldo novels and they have made a welcome contribution this year, as do fees from workshops and literary events, payments from PLR and the ALCS. I have made bits of money from old Doctor Who projects in the past, but those cheques are few and far between these days…

Making coin from Cesare Aldo

Having established most of my self-employed income now comes from the Aldo novels, let’s look at how that money differs across time. In the bar chart below you’ll see that the green block representing royalties only appears in the current tax year. (I discussed the joy of getting my first Aldo royalties in a previous newsletter.)

Most Aldo-related income is from advances against future work and sales. In 2019-20 I signed my first contract for the series and got a nice wee sum to get me started. I got no money at all in the 2020 calendar year, but an advance payment for City of Vengeance’s hardback publication in February 2021 kept things ticking over.

You might notice my Aldo income bounces up and down quite a bit. The up years are when I agree a new contract and get a healthy chunk of advance in return for signing that contract. Down years are where I get smaller advance payments for things like the acceptance of a manuscript, hardback publication or paperback publication.

I write an Aldo book each year. This means a new book gets published annually which leads to regular advance payments. That can continue so long as I keep getting new contracts for further books. But I’ll be out of contract after I deliver Aldo book six, a nervous period for most authors. Will the publisher want more? Only time will tell…

The rest of my freelance income

Once you take Aldo out of my self-employed revenue streams, the rest divides up pretty evenly across several categories. As you can see in the chart below, I had a very lucrative 2024-25 for my comics work. But the preceding five years demonstrate how inconsistent the income from that strand of my work has been.

You can also see some of my other strands are dying away. Various projects involving Doctor Who were a healthy contribution in 2019-20, but have paid very little since. My sub-publishing income is also fading fast, and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

But there is good news, too. I made no money from literary festivals and workshops before 2021, now those make a nice wee contribution. Before the Aldo novels my Public Lending Right income had dwindled to very little, but now it is flourishing well. These things ebb and flow, much like the career of any writer.

That becomes even more apparent in this line graph charting the ways different revenues rise and fall. (I omitted comics because it dwarfed the other categories.) You can see self-publishing and Doctor Who outputs trending down, while festivals and PLR/ALCS have been increasing for me, albeit with the occasional wobble.

But what does all this mean?

Good question! I currently teach four days a week. That stable income gives me the privilege of writing what I want without worrying if it will pay the bills. Nonetheless this does restrict the time available for writing. This is why I decided to put an x-ray to my creative outputs and decide where I wish to put my energies in future.

Sometimes you pick a project, sometimes it finds you. I choose to self-publish in the past but have no plans for more at present. Some Doctor Who jobs came to me, others I sought. Now I want to write my own stories more than a licensed property. (I do have four issues of Fantomen comic to script before 2027, but they may be my last ones.)

I used to write for radio and television but doubt I will again. After a decade away from prose fiction, I’m back doing what I love. If I stopped teaching, I believe I could write more than one novel a year while maintaining quality. But whatever I write, I want to be proud of it. I’m choosing work that matters to me, that gives me purpose.

The harsh truth is none of us live forever. I’d rather create things I care about in the time I have left than waste those years on things that don’t matter to me. Onwards!

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