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.

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 doubtless headed for fail</li>
	<li>Multiple income streams -- rich wives or husbands, inherited fortunes, lottery winnings -- are a good idea in any walk of life, writing or not</li>
	<li>Most of us have only one life and twenty four hours a day in which to pursue both leisure and work. Which means we need to work out what to do with those twenty four hours very carefully.</li>
</ul>
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