Authors making money: F. Scott Fitzgerald
HOW POPULAR WRITERS EARNED A LIVING
I’ve been curious about how much money popular writers made in their lifetime. More specifically, I’m curious by the writers who made a lot of money while they lived.
With that question in mind, I started researching writers (authors mostly) from all over the world who achieved financial success. I’m learning so much about the publishing industry from the 19th and 20th century and its similarities and differences from publishing today.
I’ve started compiling a list of authors making money and will be posting them throughout this series. Today, I’ll be starting with F. Scott Fitzgerald.
How was F. Scott Fitzgerald known during his lifetime?
Today, F. Scott Fitzgerald is probably best known for his novel The Great Gatsby, originally published in 1925. But during his lifetime, The Great Gatsby wasn’t even his most popular book and earned the least amount of royalties from his novels.
For most of his writing career, Fitzgerald was known more for his short stories. He sold his writing to magazines, but apparently wasn’t too happy with the type of writing that brought him the most money. In his own words, Fitzgerald says of his writing for the Post:
My trash for the Post grows worse and worse as there is less and less heart in it—strange to say my whole heart was in my first trash.
As we’ll see later, that “trash” was what made Fitzgerald part of the one percent of American earners. He despised the need to “write down” but was never naive to what he had to do to pursue his passion for writing novels.
In all events I have a book of good stories for the fall. Now I shall write some cheap ones until I’ve accumulated enough for my next novel. When that is finished and published I’ll wait and see. It if will support me with no more intervals of trash I’ll go on as a novelist. If not I’m going to quit, come home, go to Hollywood and learn the movie business.
It took Fitzgerald three cracks at Hollywood before he finally broke through in 1937. By that time, even though he was making a good living from writing, he struggled with money. Some say he was a spendthrift and there’s some evidence that may be true, but the main reason for his financial struggles was the health of his wife, Zelda.
From about 1931 onwards, Fitzgerald spent the majority of his earnings on medical care for his wife. They never reached the point of poverty, but for those years, life wasn’t as luxurious as you would think for someone who earned the type of money Fitzgerald did.
How much money did Fitzgerald make?
1920 was the year he really started earning. According to William J. Quirk, who obtained copies of Fitzgerald’s handwritten tax returns, “Fitzgerald sold 11 short stories to magazines for $3,975 and four short stories to the movies for $7,425; he received $6,200 in royalties from This Side of Paradise. The novel, published in April 1920, went through printing after printing, totaling 49,075 copies—more than any of his other novels during his lifetime.”
As I mentioned earlier, short stories were the main source of income for Fitzgerald. By 1929, Fitzgerald was attracting $4,000 per story from the Post. In today’s economy, that would translate to about $60,000. That’s per story.
During Fitzgerald’s Hollywood years, MGM paid him $1,100/week. From 1937-1938, he made roughly $85,000 from MGM. If we go back to his tax returns, we see that Fitzgerald routinely earned what would be the equivalent of $500,000/year for most of his working career. And because he was only taxed at 5% (because that was the tax rate, not because of any kind of loopholes for the rich), he retained much of that income. That was enough money for Fitzgerald and his family to have servants around the house, a luxury many upper class Americans at the time enjoyed.
As for his present-day classic, The Great Gatsby, it only earned just over $8,000 in royalties while Fitzgerald was alive. Movie rights for Gatsby totaled approximately $18,910 and rights for the play sold for $6,864. His total earnings from all three of his novels at the time—Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, and Tender is the Night—totaled $74,515 (From 1919-1936). Those figures couldn’t compare to his earnings from short stories, which were $386,382 during the same time period.
Converting those figures into present day, Fitzgerald earned millions as a writer, primarily from short stories.
What do you think? Does this surprise you in any way? Let me know.
It's likely Fitzgerald might have been richer had he not had to devote so much of his money to Zelda's medical care, but that he did so is a very obvious sign of his love for her.
And he had 122 rejections before his first pub! Encouraging to keep going 💪🏻