How Much Do Trek Writers Make Per Novel?

My feeling as well. If you feel a desire to write, then write. And then try to publish it afterwards, of course. But don't decide whether or not to write based on whether or not it's a good investment, cause it never is.

As far as doing something you love -vs- being paid for it, a fairly unrelated story (but as an added bonus, it tells you why your clothes are made in Asia).

I love the "Stargate: SG-1" tv series. And having been in the military, when I first got into it I figured "Hey, this'd be a cheap, easy Halloween costume to do." Not so much. Turns out the uniforms on the show, while based on military gear, are custom-made. But in finding this out, I found a substantial number of people who get into dressing up in SG1 costumes. That's all another story for another time. But the bottom line is that it is very hard to get a good SG-1 jacket for a decent price.

Well at some point I figured out how to convert a $30 BDU uniform shirt into a damned fine approximation of the jacket on the show for maybe $5 worth of additional materials.

So at that point I figured "Hey. Maybe I could make some of these to order and sell them to other costumers at a better price than anyone else is doing."

So then I figured out how much time it took me to make all the modifications to make a jacket. It turned out that if I was going to sell it at what I thought was a fair price, I'd have to "pay" myself around $3-4 an hour for my time.

Now, sure, that would pick up as I got better at making jackets, but even if I had as many customers as I could want and could crank out a jacket in no time flat, I couldn't figure out any way that I could make jackets for the level of profit someone with a Master's degree in business should get--(well, apart from having them made in Korea or something) and I sure couldn't figure out a way to do it for significantley less than anyone else was making them.

Eh. A rambling, self-indulgent screed, but the bottom line is that your time is worth money--even if you're doing something you enjoy. And if you aren't making enough to justify it, you need to figure out another way to feed yourself.

^And the flip side of that is the thousands of fans who make their own Klingon uniforms.

Not only have the actors told them that their handmade uniforms are much higher quality than the "official" Paramount issue (fans use real leather, for example, not vinyl), but for a while there Paramount was sending people around to conventions to make sure the uniforms hadn't been stolen from the lot -! Even they were impressed.

There's always custom fiction and non fiction to-order. Kinda bizarre little business I've got going on, but it pays mighty mighty bills. $600 a week to give people exactly the short stories they've always wanted to read -- or always wanted to write but can't do themselves (for whatever reason) -- not a bad way to put bread on the table.

Traditional publishing vs. new media is a topic for a new thread, though.

My future mother in law made my future wife and myself some original series Star Trek uniforms for Halloween back in the 1990s.

That is when I realized that to look good in a Trek uniform, "reasonably fit" is pretty much a given.

Where can I find out more about that?

I've resisted the urge to go into that kind of thing. Prefer the odd over-the-transom ghosting/doctoring job. But it is just one example of how the medium is opening up, courtesy of web access.

Wonder if it would be possible to either split this or move this to the Workshop?

That is really an interesting niche idea. Almost like the wandering bard of the Middle Ages, singing and telling stories at inns in exchange for room and board.

Volpone and Garamet, Why dothey let KJA write and publish?

Okay, who are "they" and who's KJA?

K(something) J. Anderson, most prolific in Star Wars novels, IIRC. One more in baba's endless stream of Not-Star-Trek-Novelists whom we happen to be Not-Discussing.

Link in my sig.

I would think that franchise fiction might be an easier sell vs. a lower payout. A big brand name will move books, which means the publisher is taking a risk as always but not as big a risk as they would with with a title that doesn't already have a pre-sold market -- but there are so many available choices under the Pocket/Star Trek umbrella that any given novelist isn't likely to be paid top dollar.

Garamet, is that hunch more or less accurate?

Right on target. The franchise logo is an automatic sell. (An editor no longer at Pocket used to say "You can sell shit, as long as you stick the Trek logo on it.")

A media tie-in novel can sell hundreds of thousands of copies. An original s/f novel is lucky to pull 10,000, and some of 'em never get out of the warehouse until they turn up on the remainders table. That's all about the whims of the marketing department.

Of course, the royalty on a media tie-in is a fraction of what it would be for your own novel, because so many factors go into the split.

Still, a small royalty on lots of copies is better than a standard royalty on a book that doesn't earn out. Ten percent of nothing is still nothing.

Fuck, I would imagine original literary sci fi is pretty much dead now.

Everyone gets their entertainment from TV and video games now.

Hence movies based on TV shows, comic books, and video games instead of on books--there just aren't any books to adapt.

"Coming Summer 2012: 'GEICO Caveman: the Motion Picture'!"

Yep, pretty much. An agent friend of mine described the genre as "listing like the Titanic."

A lot of the younger demographic doesn't read *anything*. The majority of those who do seem to like linear plots and nice, short sentences.

Of course, I've dealt with editors like that, too. It's a big part of the reason why whatever I write on my own from now on will be self-published...

I'm gonna c&p this over into the Workshop if a thread hasn't already started up in there.

As has been proven many a time!