Sunday writing advice: When to quit the day job?

YA author Lisa Schroeder recently made a big decision in the life of an emerging author … she quit her day job. Wahoo! But for an up-and-coming author, it can be tricky to figure out the best time to quit your day job. In other words, when can you make a living solely off of writing books?

Here is some of Lisa’s advice:

1) Royalty checks coming in. This was huge for me. No matter what else happened, I knew that in February and August, I would have some income coming in. My first novel, I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME, continues to sell well, and since the advance wasn’t huge, I’m now earning money on those sales. With my second book, FAR FROM YOU, now out for over a year, I’m hoping sales for that one will start to produce royalties as well.

2) Two new novels coming out within a couple of months of each other. Up until this year, I was able to balance the writing and promotion fairly well. Mostly, to be honest, because I didn’t do much in the way of promotion. I decided early on that the best thing I could do to promote my books was to write more books. So that’s what I did with the limited amount of time I had. But with the tween and teen publishing world getting more competitive by the day, I decided I need to have time to write AND promote. I just couldn’t do it all anymore.