I'm just beginning year eight of full-time writing, and the project of supporting myself remains a work in progress. Writing itself pays crap, as most people are no doubt aware. There is a tier of professional nonfiction writing that is very lucrative (your Ta Nahisi Coates, Michael Lewises, and Malcolm Gladwells). Somewhere below that tier is the one I'm on--where it's possible to publish books and articles to your heart's content and still not make enough to live on. The entire enterprise of publishing--newspapers, magazines, books, online--has been hemorrhaging money for years, and there's less and less of it to go around.

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