In my experience, in NY, the majority of people working in contemporary literature publishing are ivy leage graduates, mostly women, and they live off of their parents. I'm not judging, just stating my observation.
Literary fiction, yes. That market's so fucked that the vast majority of literary magazines don't pay at all and you'll often get sneered at for asking about pay.
Anyone trying to make any amount of money at writing writes genre fic of one sort or another. Fantasy or maybe sci fi, and probably "juvenile fiction" (tends to sell better to adults, too). Romance (which may or may not actually be straight-up porn, basically). Airport thrillers. Not lit-fic. Never, if your goal is to make any money at all.
And yeah, the publishing-side heavily favors people with money, lit-fic or not, for the reason that making a living at it requires excellent connections to get you directly into a high-paying part of it, or else years and years making less than it takes to live on in places like New York, to work your way up the ladder. Either way, that probably means family money. This phenomenon been mentioned, directly or obliquely, in IIRC all of: Bullshit Jobs (Graeber, 2018), Fussell's Class (1983), and The Official Preppy Handbook (Birnbach et al, 1980).
wharvle|2 years ago
Anyone trying to make any amount of money at writing writes genre fic of one sort or another. Fantasy or maybe sci fi, and probably "juvenile fiction" (tends to sell better to adults, too). Romance (which may or may not actually be straight-up porn, basically). Airport thrillers. Not lit-fic. Never, if your goal is to make any money at all.
And yeah, the publishing-side heavily favors people with money, lit-fic or not, for the reason that making a living at it requires excellent connections to get you directly into a high-paying part of it, or else years and years making less than it takes to live on in places like New York, to work your way up the ladder. Either way, that probably means family money. This phenomenon been mentioned, directly or obliquely, in IIRC all of: Bullshit Jobs (Graeber, 2018), Fussell's Class (1983), and The Official Preppy Handbook (Birnbach et al, 1980).