Serious question: how much could he realistically make putting out mediocre science fiction novels?

[Ladynyahh]

Has anyone ever figured out the actual numbahs? I'm actually curious with how it works now with Twitter/other platforms and how easy it is to reach his "fans" to self promote.

If he charges $30 a book and he's got maybe 2000 people who are actually interested in what he writes about and buys his book, how much of that goes to the publisher? What are his expenses? I'm thinking maybe he makes 30 or 35k tops from one book. And how many could he put out in a year?

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is at what point do you realize you're not a successful author? Also fat?

 

[DanMullen'sRetardedNephew]

Has anyone ever figured out the actual numbahs? I'm actually curious with how it works now with Twitter/other platforms and how easy it is to reach his "fans" to self promote.

If he charges $30 a book and he's got maybe 2000 people who are actually interested in what he writes about and buys his book, how much of that goes to the publisher? What are his expenses? I'm thinking maybe he makes 30 or 35k tops from one book. And how many could he put out in a year?

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is at what point do you realize you're not a successful author? Also fat?

Depends on a lot of things. Typically authors don't see anything from book sales for a while because they have to earn back their advance first. The problem with trying to work out Pat's earnings is that he's such a pathological liar, we don't know what info is real and what isn't.

The one thing we know for sure is that he's fat.

 

[Stent]

Mary Robinette-Kowal explained that even authors getting six figure checks for multiple books weren't actually earning a lot of money once you factor in the time it takes to write them and the year long gaps publishers put between releases.

If Rick were earning even slightly significant money after his advances were covered then he'd be tweeting photos of the checks. Either that or he's trying to hide the money from the IRS.

 

[guest]

I think a few enterprising brothermen worked out that at best he might be making a few thousand/year in total from all of his books, not counting any advances. So for 2021 he wasn't under contract, didn't get any advances, his royalties were under $10,000 and possibly under $5k in total. The assumption is that one or both of them collect some disability or he's still getting residuals from his insurance sales. Also in 2021 I think they collected over $30k in PPP loans. He's still very poor, also very fat.

 

[guest]

I bet he makes like 30 bucks a month.

 

[LaylaCumiasMoistHotPocket]

I bet he makes like 30 bucks a month.

And thats just from blowin 6 guys under the queensboro bridge

edit- that should read Daniel W.Hoan memorial bridge.

 

[BudDickman]

It's pretty easy to ballpark what he makes because he had a book advance of $8500 per title and his publisher did not renew his contract. A book advance is like an interest-free loan paid back by the royalties that the book generates for the author, and it is typically an estimate of a year's worth of royalties.

The fact that his contract was not renewed means his books did not hit their mark. He hasn't released anything in over a year and he only has a handful of books on the market, which become more and more obscure as time goes by. So it's hard to imagine that any of his books generate more than a couple thousand dollars a year in royalties, assuming that they've even earned out (i.e. the book advance has been paid back).

So he doesn't make shit. Probably $10k/year, $15/year max. I suspect the PPP "loan" he took out for $11k is a year's worth of income for him when he was actually being productive as a writer (by his standards). He's a loser.

 

[LaylaCumiasMoistHotPocket]

It's pretty easy to ballpark what he makes because he had a book advance of $8500 per title and his publisher did not renew his contract. A book advance is like an interest-free loan paid back by the royalties that the book generates for the author, and it is typically an estimate of a year's worth of royalties.

The fact that his contract was not renewed means his books did not hit their mark. He hasn't released anything in over a year and he only has a handful of books on the market, which become more and more obscure as time goes by. So it's hard to imagine that any of his books generate more than a couple thousand dollars a year in royalties, assuming that they've even earned out (i.e. the book advance has been paid back).

So he doesn't make shit. Probably $10k/year, $15/year max. I suspect the PPP "loan" he took out for $11k is a year's worth of income for him when he was actually being productive as a writer (by his standards). He's a loser.

Surely your not intimating that Patrick S. Tomlinson, is a deceitful shyster miscreant on top of being a wanted Milwaukee child sex offender.

Because if you are, Sir, you would be correct.

 

[DeadWithoutMyDavid]

You're all being generous. Pat is a nobody. He is much more famous for being fat on the internet than for any writing. Almost no one buys fiction books from unknown authors because it's more likely to suck than not. If you were a casual reader in the mood for sci-fi, would you pick Isaac Asimov or a book with a smug pigman pointing at his forehead on the back cover?

I doubt he makes more than a grand in a year.

 

[TorquieTwoBeers]

I tracked his Amazon sales for like a year and Pat was selling less than 15 paperbacks per month, and that was all five of his books put together.

Here's something to chew on: if he receives 8% royalties on his book sales, at $15 a pop (he would sell zero copies at $30), in order to make even $10,000 a year, he'd need to sell 8,333 copies of his books per year. And there is absolutely no way he sells that many. He's lucky if he sells a quarter of that. The man makes no money.

(8,333 copies x $15 x 0.08 = $10,000)

 

[guest]

If it wasn't for covid and the fraudulent ppp loans Patrick would've been dead broke by now.

 

[HotDogJoe]

He isn’t making shit. The only evidence you need for that is the fact that he lives in that tiny shithole house and rents out half of it.

 

[Patrick O'Neal]

2 or 3 dollars a sale, less than 1,000 sales a year.

Any advance he got would have been through porcine trickery such as screenshotting and downloading fake reviews from his Minor Attracted Writers of America buddies.

If he had a shred of decency, he'd pay back that unearned advance. But you know what he's like with other people's money.

 

[NoBacon]

he’s making righteous bucks

but he’s living in poverty housing where a new phone and a fridge is a big ticket purchase. He’s a complete loser.

 

[Ant_It_Fun]

If he was making anything, he wouldn't be living like he does.

 

[Joe_Cumia_Eats_HUMAN_SHIT]

Before he was saying comedy was paying his bills. Now he says it's writing. I think Patrick makes money hand over fist touring local eating contests

 

[FurBurger]

There's been a couple of attempts to work though how much he makes that were posted on Version 2 of this forum (now gone since the lolsuit). @TonyTwoBeers has mentioned tracking Amazon sales, I think somebody was ringing around bookstores on the day of his last release checking the number of copies on-hand, and someone had the bright idea to check with the world's largest bricks-and-mortar book store as they posted real-time stock levels.

I'd be very, very surprised if he's cracked $10k in royalties in any given year. It's a little murky as it looks like he got three advances in one hit from Tor when he first signed (about $8500 each, which he rounded up to $30k for Twitter bragging rights and then had to delete the tweet after somebody involved shouted at him). Since those advances are loans, and based on what the publisher expects his royalties to be in a year, and since Tor don't even have his next book (which he completed last year) on their schedule, and since they made him drop his trilogy and try a different genre for the third book, and since if you do make money for them Tor will publish whatever you write (Charles Stross has something like 15-20 books across multiple series published through them).... I don't think he earned out those $8500 advances, or earned them out quickly enough for Tor to consider him worth publishing anymore.

I'm pretty convinced that Pat makes his actual income from what Doug Stanhope calls "fraud telemarketing" - in this case, selling low-value health insurance via phone - and that's why he's kept his Florida insurance sales licence.