Talking Finance, Blog Hopping.


I’m back on the blog hop again, here’s this weeks prompt.

What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?

An interesting prompt this week, and one which is not quite as simple to answer as you might think. The way my mind works, this is actually several possible questions.


If you’re referring to money which I have spent to advance my writing career, my answer would have to be the money I spend on my editor. Not cheap but worth every penny. In fact, over the ten or so books that she’s collaborated on, I’ve very rarely found (or been told of) any mistakes after she’s finished with them.

She also features in reviews, like this one for my Space Opera Myra. It’s important to remember that any book is a team effort, everyone deserves a share in the credit.



After all, it might be my words but without her attention to detail, they would be a lot less readable. The most important thing, one that I learned very early on in my writing adventure, is that it’s very difficult to edit your own work. And that nothing puts a reader off buying your second book more than a badly edited first one. Even a few minor inconsistencies, but we won’t go into that.

Editing is only one of the services that you can spend your money on. There are things like cover design, formatting and advertising. Then there are fees for software, organisations like the Alliance of Independent Authors, local book groups etc. All of them important in their own way but dare I say it, none of them are anywhere near as vital as a good editor.


Then we have another way of looking at the prompt, it could be referring to the best money I spent because of my writing career. That’s much easier to answer; it would be my first royalty payment, which bought me a pint of beer (as you can tell it wasn’t a huge payment…, but there was some change!)

That was received for my novel Freefall, way back in 2013. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to receive royalty payments just about every month. Never big ones, but the fact that they occur at all is encouraging, as they show that my work is getting noticed.

Like a lot of authors, I’m not doing it purely for the money, although it’s very welcome. If I wasn’t getting a penny, I’d still write and publish. You see; if I didn’t tell the stories that are bursting out of my head, I’d feel somehow unfulfilled. The fact that people are prepared to pay to read the product of my keyboard is a bonus

Which reminds me of the Stephen King quote,



And if you apply that quote to the fact that I’ve been able to buy things with the money I’ve received from my writing; Stephen King thinks that I’m talented!!

And that’s good enough for me.


If this post has got you interested in any of my novels, you can get more details by clicking the Portfolio link. Or, to receive a free short story, The Orbital Livestock Company, just join my team of subscribers by clicking here.

I’ll be back on Thursday with another Showcase post, featuring an Indie Author with something to say. Please click the links to see the other great blogs on this hop.

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7 Responses

  1. Stevie Turner

    Editors and book cover designers are definitely worth spending your money on. Like you I receive royalties every month, but tend to plough the money back into publishing.

    • Richard Dee

      Thanks for commenting. It’s hard to prioritise; especially when you are unknown. I do think that; as with food, “the first bite is with the eye.”

  2. Lela Markham

    I spend my money where I am not talented or skilled. So, yes, an editor AfTER I’ve run it through a few beta readers to make the manuscript as clean as I can make it, thus saving me money. I design my own covers because my artist daughter taught me how back when I hadn’t made any money on my books yet and I kind of like doing it. That saves at least a few hundred a book. That’s money that I can use to market the book – which I am not talented at and the little bit of skill I picked up in my journalism course doesn’t negate the fact that ads cost money to run.

    I treat my books like a business, which means I have a bottom line. In analyzing my numbers, I’d say marketing — ad buys — have given me my best bang-for-the-buck. I can edit a book and have a great cover and that’s needed and wonderful, but if nobody knows the book is out there — and the competition is HUGE these days — then the book won’t sell.

    • Richard Dee

      I started the first book as a hobby, I then found that I kept getting ideas and series were born. It’s still very casual; I don’t do as much marketing as I could (for several reasons) but prioritise the creation of stories and universes.

      • p.J. MacLayne

        Writing has a way of getting under your skin and becoming part of you. I miss it when I need to devote my time elsewhere.

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