It had a bearing on my decision to post about the numbers of my own deal (a first deal, and I’m ten years younger than Scalzi, which also had a bearing on my numbers. In 10 years I could very well be making $164K a year writing, especially if I still have a corp writing day job). I felt it would benefit my readers, at least, to know the kind of first deal that I got with the experience I’ve got. Helps with expectations. Again, we all *say* we *know* that we’re not *expecting* to get a 6-figure first book advance, but we do all secretly *hope* for it right out of the gate.

I think I’ll get there. Just not… yeah, right out of the gate. All of us start small. It’s worth keeping in mind while you trudge along.

I honestly wasn’t talking about you personally, just so you know. I just think that because blog memes spread so fast, no one has really thought out, or can see, the total effect, either way (and ultimately I might change my position, after the dust settles, so to speak). Me, I like knowing other people’s incomes and them not knowing mine. :) But, as I said before, I don’t feel strongly about this one way or the other. I’ve enjoyed reading the comments on the initial post. Although, again, any writer with an agent doesn’t actually need this information–that’s what they have the agent for, and also why Tobias Buckell does his surveys.

JeffV

I do think that, as young writers, our expectations are really, really high. All you ever hear about in the media are the great bazillion dollar deals (which are usually crap books, coincidentally). Sure, we’ve all read the “averages,” but when never expect that to be *us* or our *friends.*

Hearing somebody’s personal account, for me, is a lot more powerful than averages. Especially, again, after Scalzi’s triumphant proclaimation.

Again: totally personal decision, but that was the rational behind my disclosure, in any case.

As an aside, my employer fires people for disclosing their income, which is the only reason I haven’t stated in a non-LJ locked post how much I make a year at my writing day job. Again, my personal choice to share or not, like any other personal detail, but it’s also useful for other copywriters to hear what other copywriters charge, too. And it means more to me, as a reader, when it comes from a personality I “Know” than when it’s just la la averages. I’ve sort of built my blog on sharing personal experiences in the hopes that they’ll help others who go through the same stuff, tho, so it sorta goes with the theme of the blog.

Is it always a good thing to disclose? Probably not. Like anything else, you look at what you’re saying and who you’re saying it to and weigh what the ramifications will be. Then you make the decision based on that. For me, the pros of what I wanted to do outweighed the cons (in the case of publically disclosing my work income, however, the pros DO NOT outweigh the cons, thus it remains a misty-hazy number somewhere between “less than what I made in Chicago” and “more than subsistence level.”

I must say though, for those who ARE interested in commercial writing, if the salary disclosure blogging has given aspiring writers a better understanding of what they can expect if they quit their day job, it’s done some good. And, rather than being pretentious, I think most are done in a fairly selfless spirit of demystifying an aspect of the craft that’s not often discussed, at least not in concrete terms. As long as they’re honest in both the numbers and the time/work/luck it took to achieve them (and I haven’t read any that I thought weren’t) what’s the harm in having access to more information?

JV

The contrary to this is if you’re talking about money in a less than honest, pissing contest kind of way, I don’t care about it. That part is a stupid, cocktail-party game. One which usually ends we me coming up with the most clever variant of “seems cheap to sell one’s soul for such a paltry sum.”