thread: 2012-03-13 : Indie POV pt 2: Does It Pay?
On 2012-03-13, Simon R wrote:
For you? It's clear. You and a few others earn more than the entire COP RPG hobby publishers combined, by a long way.
So, I think it's a little misleading to hold yourself out as a point of comparison - you are the pinacle of success, the astronaut, the X Factor winner of COPs.
Even so, by your calculations, you would have had to have written 8000 words a month for 7 years to match what you earned. Most RPG freelancers could do that in 4 days a month, including time for research, rewriting and polishing*. Look at it this way, a typical freelancer could match this word count in a year, then have six years to spare, to do more work-for-hire freelancing.
That's a respectable time commitment, but how many days of work did you have to do, publishing, designing and writing and shipping? Fewer I expect, but nontheless I don't think it's as clear cut a difference as you make out.
I'd contend that most COPs earn less for their time (if you want to measure it that way) than work-for-hire writers.
I am sticking within the narrow terms you mention here, and putting aside the other benefits of being a COP. Personally, I can't even imagine what writing 60K words a month would be like, and I don't think it's accurate to look at your effort and time in terms of word count.
[Aside: That said, IndieGoGo and Kickstarter may have thrown everything out of whack and changed the rules. If you specified a game and crowdfunded it, I'd be surprised if it wasn't in five figures within 24hrs.]
