I came across the work of writer Hollis Gillespie yesterday, after reading her column in Paste Magazine. After looking through her site, I am struck once more by how many balls a writer must keep in the air to succeed (in economic terms).

Gillespie has two books for sale; she teaches writing seminars for $150 a pop; she’s a commentator on NPR; writes a weekly piece for Creative Loafing; she’s working on the Hollywood adaptation of her first book; she’s the Georgia editor for Fodor’s Gold Guide to The Carolina’s and Georgias; she writes for Salon.com; is a tri-lingual international flight attendant and a mom.

The fact is you can’t just write a book and hope the royalties come rollin’ in. A book’s economic function is to get you more and hopefully better work teaching, consulting, writing, editing, speaking, etc.