I honestly never dreamed I'd be writing a blog post about writing that would include the term 'multiple revenue streams'. But ever since I wrote <a title="Why I don’t take career advice from Cory Doctorow" href="http://davidhewson.com/2011/04/why-i-dont-take-career-advice-from-cory-doctorow/">the Cory Doctorow</a> post, and <a href="http://chocolateandvodka.com/2011/04/13/can-you-afford-a-monoculture-career/">the ensuing Twitter exchanges</a>, it seems impossible to escape the damned phrase. Now John Scalzi (have to mention his wonderful Electronic Publishing Bingo card again) has weighed in too.

So let me try and put down what I think succinctly here.
<ul>
	<li>Anyone who gives up the day job and tries to become a full-time writer from scratch is arguably insane and probably headed for a sticky end.</li>
	<li>Multiple income streams -- rich wives or husbands, inherited fortunes, lottery winnings, adopting a guru-like stance which gets you fancy paid speaking engagements -- are a good idea in any walk of life, writing or not. Provided they don't get in the way of the real work.</li>
</ul>
That last sentence is the kicker. When I started out writing I couldn’t make enough money from books alone. So I kept on with a parallel career in journalism. For the last decade of that it was writing an 800-word weekly column for the <em>Sunday Times</em>. Latterly they paid me £40,000 a year for those 800 words a week, which was a lot of money frankly. In 2005 I quit the paper. Partly because I was bored with the work. Partly because a movie deal made me feel a little less needy. But principally because I felt it was time to focus on my fiction and devote mo better books.

Authors can have multiple revenue streams without doing much more than write a book. You can have an agent who will sell that book into other markets: audio, foreign translation, TV and movies. Except if you're self published you can't because self-published authors generally speaking won't have agent. Yes I know Cory Doctorow does but as I keep saying repeatedly Cory Doctorow is Cory Doctorow and no one else. Just because he can do something doesn't mean you can emulate him.

So by following the self-pub give-it-away-free route you lose those multiple revenue streams and, yes, need to go chasing another job.

B