Poets & Writers – July-August 2019

the practical writer HOW TO GET PAID

73 POETS & WRITERS

is called a “draw,” which amounts to a
regular salary advanced to him against
his future commissions. Now that his
commissions have begun to
outpace what the agency is
paying him—and he has paid
back the money the agency
advanced him in his earlier
years—he earns his regular
salary plus whatever extra is
owed to him in commissions.
“The thing about being an
agent versus being an editor
is that it’s very slow to build
momentum, so that when
you start off, you don’t make
any money and you’re prob-
ably going to end up owing
back taxes like I did,” Cusick
says. “But as time goes on, as
you build that momentum, the money
starts to make itself a little bit. A book
I sold a few years ago is now generating
royalties, and twice a year there’s just
a check that comes in. I didn’t do any-
thing, and there it is.”

The combination of poorly paid

apprenticeships and the high cost of

living in cities where many publishers

have their offices can make it hard for

young people without savings or fam-

ily support to join the industry, which

is one factor that contributes to a still-

glaring lack of diversity in publishing.

In the book business, according to a

2018 study by Publishers Weekly, fully

86 percent of the workforce is white

and only 2 percent is Black.

Nigerian-born poet

and fiction writer Hafizah

Geter’s path to her present

job as an editor at Amazon

Publishing’s Little A and

Topple Books illustrates how

hard it can be for a writer of

modest means to gain a foot-

hold in the book business.

Geter moved to New York

City in 2012 without a job

and survived her first year

by crashing at the apartment

of a college friend in Brook-

lyn and relying on a small

stipend from a Cave Canem

fellowship. She then found

work at a series of arts nonprofits,

scraping by financially until the job

at Amazon Publishing opened up in

2017.

“When I started working at Little

A, my father, who is an artist and is

Any writer considering a career in publishing

must first face the fact that the job market

is fiercely competitive—and it’s shrinking.

Over the past two decades, the number

of people working in book publishing has

plummeted from just more than 91,000 in

1997 to roughly 60,000 at the end of 2018.