Lucrative Side Hustles: Author Gil Robertson Shares Tricks of the Writing Trade

We have good news for you. You can have a cool career and make a good living. No need to choose between loving your job and paying your mortgage. The following profile, part of the BlackEnterprise.com Cool Jobs series, offers a peek into the nuts and bolts, perks and salaries behind enjoyable careers.

Unless you just so happened to have penned, say, the volumes that became the epic television series “Game of Thrones,” it’s a pretty accepted fact that most professional writers don’t make a ton of money.

These days even successful freelance journalists and authors are finding it necessary to look to other streams of income as an increasing number of newspapers and magazines go the way of the dinosaurs, with many opting to teach, go into publicity or adopt other side hustles.

The harsh reality of the times makes being passionate about what you build your platform on that much more critical.

Gil Robertson, a journalist, author, lecturer and media consultant, knows this well.

Though he himself has long added several slashes after his name, Robertson is determined to make his literary offerings count, building his catalog with socially conscious, thought-provoking anthologies for African American audiences.

“I spent a great many years working as an entertainment journalist, and a pretty successful one,” Robertson says. “Then I

reached a certain point in my career when I felt like I wanted to do something different — I wanted to tell different types of stories. And so the circumstances being what they were in my personal life—with my brother having contracted HIV, for instance— I felt like that would be a good place to start, to talk about the disease and talk about how it impacted our family. That became a book called ‘Not in My Family: AIDS in the African American Community,’ which was met with an NAACP Image Award nomination and a great deal of critical commercial success. Then my publisher asked, well, what do you want to do next? I decided that I wanted to continue putting together projects about Black identities.”

Going on to craft Family Affair: What it Means to be African American Today, the latest book Robertson has edited is called “Where Did Our Love Go: Essays on Love & Relationships in the African American Community,” featuring writings by the likes of R&B singer Anthony Hamilton, award-winning actress Viola Davis and various other celebrities, journalists and public figures. He’s planning on launching a nationwide tour for it this summer.

The book is in direct opposition to what the Los Angeles-area scribe and publicist says have been ongoing attacks on the state of African-American relationships in the press, without involving the thoughtful voices of African Americans themselves.

“It’s a collection of writings where the authors who are single, married and divorced offer thoughtful opinions and ideas about love and relationships in the Black community. I mean, how do we make love work as a group when we’re constantly under assault in other areas of our lives, including this one? This book, like all the others I’ve done, is about wellness in the African American community. It’s about creating meaningful dialogue.”

The next book on Robertson’s radar will be one on death and dying in the Black community. “I lost my mom in September, and 13 years prior to that, I lost my father. It’s been rough,” he says. “In our community, our parents are really important. Black mothers and fathers play a very instrumental role that is somewhat different, I think, from other communities. I don’t think that the love is different. I just think that, in a sort of a nuanced way, our relationship with them resonates differently than it does in other communities. It’s the reason why we so relate to that that song by Bill Withers, ‘Grandma’s Hands,’ for instance, or The Intruders’ ‘I’ll Always Love My Mama.'”

Though Robertson has some cinema-related projects up his sleeve— specifically documentaries based on his books— he highly recommends books as a way for professional writers to make a living.

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“As far as an advance is concerned, you might be looking at anywhere between $15,000 to $25,000 for a healthy advance,” he says. “What you don’t want to do, however, is have your advance be so high that you don’t earn out, because if you don’t earn out then the book is looked at as being a failure,” he adds. “Publishers don’t want to do business with people who don’t earn out on their investments. Essentially a book proposal is a business proposal, and, essentially, your publisher is your chief investor. Based on the proposal, Publisher A says, ‘Ok, fine I will invest in that. In exchange for that— after you’ve fulfilled my initial investment— I will pay you a royalty.’”

Speaking gigs related to the topics you cover in your books can also generate a handsome income.

“In terms of speaking, an author or journalist should be able to command $2,500 to $3000 for an hour-long speech,” he says. “[Depending on your popularity] it could jump from $5,000 to $10,000. I know when I first started doing speeches I felt like a superstar because I’d go on to a campus —I do a lot of college talks— and talk about HIV/AIDS or safe sex or about the very things that deal with self esteem and identity or what we’re doing now with Black love. You spend an hour talking about how to have a healthy relationship and someone gives you a check for $3,000. Really, where else can you do that?”

To that end the media professional insists that what makes the most sense for a writer financially is to remain extremely flexible regarding the kind of work he or she takes on.

“Once upon a time a person could earn a good living working as a journalist, a freelancer or working at a company,” he says. “Nowadays what you have to do is have a clear sense of what your skill sets are and know how to apply them in various ways in order to earn the amount of revenue that will allow you to sustain yourself. In my case that means paying a mortgage, into a retirement account, paying for health insurance—everything you need to lead a healthy and stable life,” he says. “So, you may do public relations, you may do media training, you may do all types of things. You may produce or write scripts. Everything I do is revolved around our ability as writers, journalists,” he says.