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I Decided to Make Money From Writing - And it's Working

I've always wanted to be a full-time writer, but I've never had a clear understanding of how to make enough money from my writing to survive. In fact I read an article on the ABC news website this morning stating that authors in Australia earn, on average, $11,000 to $13,000 per year, which sounds about right.



I can't live on that. No one can. So my fears are clearly justified. Regardless, in 2017 I decided to throw caution to the wind and try to come up with a way to make enough money from writing that I could start to think about transitioning from my regular job to the coveted holy grail of full-time writer.

I had this vague idea of combining two of my great passions, writing and gaming, to see what would come of it. I had no real understanding, at that point, of what I was getting myself into. The answer, of course, is interactive fiction. Interactive fiction - or digital gamebooks - are the modern version of Choose Your Own Adventure stories, which were among my first reading experiences, right alongside Enid Blyton's Wishing Chair and J.R.R Tolkien's The Hobbit.

The Cave of Time, Third Planet from Altair and Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? provided me with hours of fun as a kid, and after experimenting with all kinds of writing styles as an adult, I probably shouldn't be surprised that I'm now returning to this concept to provide a source of income. Why?

Because the popularity of mobile devices makes interactive fiction big news. Bigger than I expected. The most successful providers of digital gamebooks are companies like Pixelberry Studios. Pixelberry sell their products via an app called Choices: Stories you play. The Choices app sits somewhere between 20-40 week-in week-out, on Google Play's list of highest-grossing apps. It has been downloaded tens of millions of times, and that's just Android devices, never mind iOS. There are 50-60 titles available through Pixelberry's app with more being added all the time. The market is huge and hungry, and I thought it would be great to have a go at breaking into this growing area.



After playing around with a few scripting platforms like Choicescript and Twine, I thought I'd submit an application to a casual gaming company in the US, just to see whether I'd get a response and maybe some feedback. What I ended up with was a contract to write a gamebook, and since then, interest in further projects. In short, way more than I was expecting. The transition from writing short fiction to longer-form interactive fiction hasn't been difficult for me, and it's been great fun working with a team, rather than in isolation.

The money? I'm not going to quit my day job just yet, but compared to what the ABC says is the annual income for writers in Australia, it's positively outstanding. Every writer has to work out the best path for them to achieve their writing goals. Interactive fiction may not be everyone's cup of tea, but there is a huge market for it right now and it is a great match for my skill set. Plus, I find it far more rewarding to win a contract and write the story, knowing there's a good chance of the work being published, than writing in isolation and hoping I can convince someone down the track to pick up the project and run with it.



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