I have been an author for about 15 years. In that time I have published 8 novels, edited three short story anthologies, and won one award. It still doesn’t pay enough to be a full-time job. But I think it is very rare for writing to pay enough to be full-time job. I attend one or two literary festivals per year (pre-Covid) and at least 90% of the authors attending have another job as well. The joke in the community is that the difference between literary writers and genre writers is that the second job for literary writers is teacher/college professor and genre writers have all kinds of different second jobs.

But, having said that, being an author is still a lot of fun. If you’re at all a social person the festivals can be great.