I write copy occasionally as a freelancer, looking to get into copy editing full time now. as to fiction writing for a living, I salute every single person who manages to do that, even if what they write is crap (except for Paulo Coelho, but his prose is criminally bad).
a recent study showed that the average annual income of writers is only £5,000 a year try to survive on that. I interned in a book publishing house recently and the wages in this industry are really low. moving from IT to print publishing was a real shock for me in that regard. paper books are staring to sell better now, but during the years 2008-2013 the industry was pretty much run by people who had to work as baristas on weekends in order to survive.
then again, if you have to write, you write. I'm about to submit a short story to a competition with a prize of £500. I took me many hours to complete. so even if I win (unlikely!) it will've been a labour of love and not anything resembling an 'income'.
/rant
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not a bug - a feature.