The Wages of Hard-Boiled Action Writers

[englishteacherx]

So I get to wondering: how much do writers of such books make, and how much have they made in the past? I can remember the cover of my copy of a later printing of Mack Bolan #1 saying something like "8,000,000 copies sold!" and the wikipedia article on Jerry Ahern's THE SURVIVALIST series says that it also sold millions of copies. . . does that mean the two of them were millionaires?

I could imagine Don Pendleton having at least potentially been fairly rich, but is Jerry Ahern?

One poster revealed that Joesph Rosenberger, arguably the second or third most famous pulp action writer of the 70's and 80's, lived in "a middle-class neighborhood."

I do know there's at least one writer of pulps who frequents this board, and if it's not an embarrassing question, might we get some idea of how much publishers pay for these kinds of books?

[Django The Bastard]

I think most of the PMP writers wrote on a "work for hire" basis...meaning they were paid a flat fee for each volume and no royalties...probably Pendleton...and more than likely Sapir and Murphy... had a better set-up and did well, but most...not so much...

[PMP Webmaster]

Yeah, something tells me that unless you're one of the A-List (and maybe not even then) you "don't quit your day job". Even back in the days of typewriters, pounding out a 180-200 page paperback was probably something you worked at a little every day after getting home from your 'real job'. If you're one of the writers in a 'stable" for a series and therefore you spit out a book every two-three months, back in those days you'd probaby just work for an hour or two every night. When the writing is monotonous enough, you could easily crank out 5-10 pages of paperback a night.