On October 31st 2024 I am going to quit my day job. It will be a Thursday.
Why will I be quitting my day job?
Well, if all goes well with book sales as an author (see amazon.com/author/moffat) then I will have reached the point where I will no longer need to work at my regular job and can focus instead on my writing career.
How did I manage to calculate this?
Well... My book sales have been doing really well during the past 3 years. They keep tripling (or more) in volume (and profits) every year. So much so that by 2025 I will be making more money off my book sales than I will be off of my regular job. Way more money.
Being able to live in a cabin in the woods (or an off grid house) is the dream of many writers, as is the dream of becoming a professional full time writer. And my dream is slowly becoming a reality.
I only need to keep on writing, keep getting book sales, keep getting 4/5 star reviews for another...
1,179 days.
That isn't that long to wait really. I will be 45 years old by then.
The thing about book sales is that it is all about residual income. Regardless of whether you go the traditional publishing route (where they pay you a lump sum advance and then residuals) or if you self-publish (where you get all of the profit, but it comes more slowly in the form of larger residuals), the result is roughly the same: Continuing profits over a longer time period.
In fact there is an argument these days that self-publishing is actually more profitable for the writer because their books never get pulled off the shelves and disappear, whereas that can happen to older authors who will see their books discontinued due to lack of sales.
So the book selling market is naturally shifting towards more self-publishing and authors realizing that maybe traditional publishing isn't all it is cracked up to be. Works great for brand name authors like Stephen King and George R. R. Martin, but for authors who want to be able to support themselves financially it makes more sense to just focus on self-publishing and then only get a literary agent to push books that the author thinks could be a bestseller.
Eg. I am currently working on a literary fantasy which I am planning to get an agent for. The agent will get 15% of whatever the book sells for to a publisher, but it saves me the stress of having to go through the whole querying process and trying to decide which publisher to go with. By using an agent I get to relax and let them do the hard task of finding the right publisher.
Now the whole quitting my day job on October 31st 2024 idea assumes a number of things...
#1. My annual book sales continue to skyrocket at a rate of 3 times the previous year for the next 3-4 years.
#2. I don't get in some horrible accident that restricts my ability to write / come up with new stories.
#3. I don't change my mind about quitting my day job on that date.
#4. That I remember I wrote this and set it as a goal.
That's really what I am doing right now. I am setting a goal of quitting my day job so I can relax, write, buy an off grid home, and focus on the things that make me happy.
After all who would do all that if it was NOT making you a happier person?
For those other people who are looking to quit their day job and/or find a different way of supporting yourself financially, I wish you luck!
Now go browse my books and buy one! They're available in paperback/ebook and you can use the ISBN number to order from your local bookstore if you want to.
