Dan Moren

Maybe you thought I’d forgotten. Ha, I say. Ha! Not sure why this is starting on such a confrontational note, but there we are then.

Anyway, here we are again at the beginning of a brand new year. And, like last year, it’s somewhat of a milestone for me: March will mark 20 years of my professional writing career. At this point it’s hard to imagine doing anything else.

So, yes, I’m back with my yearly update on what I still call “my writing finances”, largely for hobgoblin-esque reasons, in which I look back over 2025 and run down how my business went. Mainly, it’s an opportunity for me to take stock of the year gone by, instead of just looking at my top nine Instagram posts or what music I streamed. But I also hope it makes for an interesting data point for anybody else out there who might be interested in the nuts and bolts of how being self-employed works.¹

There are, as I perennially mention, a few other writers who document this information, chief among them Jim C. Hines, who has been writing about it for about as long as I’ve been in the writing game overall.² I always find Jim’s posts super interesting, so if you’re coming here because you’re interested in the finances of fiction writing, go give it a read.

I suspect maybe a few more than average people will be reading this post for reasons—don’t worry, we’ll get there. But first let’s zoom out.

Big picture

Let’s not prevaricate: 2025 was a rough year financially. It was my second lowest in terms of gross business income over my self-employed career. While I’ve never detailed the total dollar amount, I’ll offer the same caveats as always: it’s under six figures and doesn’t include income from non-business sources³ or my partner.

Overall gross income was down 13.3% from last year, putting me 8% below my median income and 11% below my mean. I was actually only a little shy of my 2023 income, and a bit above my lowest income year ever, 2016.⁴

My expenses, for what it’s worth, have remained historically stable. They’re still about 18% of my gross income; they were down just slightly from last year, but they haven’t changed much from a dollar perspective since 2020.

As far as where that income came from, well, it’s not a huge surprise that the big driver this year was tech writing. Despite some challenges there, it’s still my bread-and-butter. While it might seem like podcasting ticked up a bit, to 40% from 35%, that’s deceptive, given the overall decline in my income: in real dollar amounts, my podcast income has been basically flat since 2023. But that’s not nothing, as I’ll go into in a moment.

Fiction writing was down to just 6%, which might seem a precipitous drop given that last year it was a hefty 18%. That doesn’t surprise me either, though. If anything, my way above average fiction writing income last year was an outlier, bumping up my overall income even as my other sources remained flat. If I’d brought in an average of 2023 and 2025’s fiction writing revenue in 2024, my overall income would have been at about the same level for the last three years.

My miscellaneous income, which includes merch and affiliate revenue, accounts for only a sliver of my overall revenue, but it too hit its lowest level ever this year.⁵

With the big picture out of the way, let’s zoom in and enhance on those details.

Freelancing

One of my major freelance writing clients over the past decade has been Macworld, where I was previously a senior editor until I was laid off in fall of 2014. After that, I wrote regular opinion columns for them starting in April 2015, continuing for almost exactly a decade to the day. The last of those columns was published at the end of April.

This is not small thing: there were years where Macworld made up 30 percent of my income, though most years were around a quarter. That had dropped in recent years as they dialed back on my column quantity, from weekly to three times a month to biweekly, and so on. And now to zero! So that’s something to look forward to in 2026. *insert Rodney Dangerfield tugging on his collar GIF*

On the other hand, I did manage to pick up a few extra freelance assignments, which I’ve been making a point of accepting as much as possible. It slightly helped take the sting off, as did a fee structure rejiggering with my other major freelance client. All together, that’s why my tech writing income was flat-to-slightly-up over 2024—although keep in mind that number still includes a full quarter my Macworld column. I won’t have that benefit in 2026, so I’m expecting that number to drop.

Podcasting

Another big factor in my down income was the continuing decline in podcast advertising. Last year, I noted that it had decreased from 20% of my income in 2023 to 14% in 2024. Well, as predicted, that slide showed no signs of reversing, and in fact continued apace: ad revenue was just 10 percent of my overall revenue in 2025.

Last year I noted that, of my two ad-supported shows, one took a much harder hit than the other. Well, that appeared to be a case of delayed reaction, as Clockwise dropped 50% in sponsor revenue in 2025; The Rebound (which already tended to have fewer and less well paying ads) was down again, this time “just” 23%.

However, there is an upside: subscription/membership fees have definitely helped keep the boat steady amongst the advertising decline, even if they’re not necessarily growing. Subscriptions to Clockwise and The Rebound were both about flat, a little down, but my other major podcast income source, The Incomparable, was up substantially, on the order of 40%.⁶

As I said above, though, all of this simply kept my podcasting income steady. Perhaps it suggests I should devote more energy to podcasting in 2026, but I would feel a lot better if there was any hope of the advertising market coming back to help balance things out. But I’m not optimistic: I think the down trend will continue in 2026, especially if my first quarter ad forecast is any indication.

So, I’ll reiterate what I wrote last year: listener support can be make or break for many podcasts of these sizes, so if you have the ability to become a member of a show you love, please do.

Fiction writing

The aforementioned drop in fiction writing income was largely expected. In 2024, I had some big payments come through, and I started earning some good returns on All Souls Lost, the novel that I published through my agency. Both that and my traditionally published books continued bringing in royalties in 2025, though there’s not a lot of growth happening there.

You might also notice that I had no new books come out in 2025; I didn’t sign any new contracts either, meaning no big payments for the year. The one thing I did publish was my latest Galactic Cold War short story. Though that doesn’t have quite the same impact as a big new novel, it and sales of my earlier self-published stories were enough to account for almost half of my fiction writing income in 2025; the rest was pretty evenly split between traditional publishing royalties and my All Souls Lost income.

But even for all of that, we’re still talking just a small slice of my overall revenue—I’m still not in any position to be a fiction writer full time, even after almost a decade.

I do have some more fiction projects in store for 2026, and I’m already expecting at least one good chunk of change to come through, with perhaps another one or two to follow. I’m also rolling around some more income diversification options for the next year or two, including perhaps something based on an entirely different model that I haven’t tried yet. We’ll see what develops.

Wrap up—but wait!

Okay, this is what you came here to hear about, right? Yes, I was on Jeopardy! last year. I even won a couple games. You can go look up exactly what I made, because people on the internet keep track of that kind of thing.⁷ Yes, it was pretty cool!

I did not include my winnings in any of the above calculations because, well, being on game shows isn’t my career anymore than playing the lottery is.⁸ Lots of people asked me, after the fact, what game show I would go on next, to which I had to answer truthfully: I’m not into game shows, I’m into trivia.

Anyway, here’s a fun fact: you know that disclaimer I put at the top about how though I don’t disclose my income, it was under six figures? Guess what: still true, even including my Jeopardy! winnings. I did, however, gross more from the show than from any individual segment of my income. Just a reminder that none of these jobs are really get-rich-quick—or even get-rich-slowly—pursuits.

Wrap up, for real

This continues to be a weird little life I’ve patched together for myself and I’m gratified that I’m able to keep doing it, because I have no idea what else I’m even qualified to do these days. Much of that is down to the support, both emotional and financial, provided by my partner.⁹ (Not to mention healthcare, because we continue to live in a weird country where that’s tied to your employment.) I want to stress that I really enjoy what I do, as well as the flexibility that my job affords me—it’s just tougher than ever for it to be self-sustaining.

Last year I concluded by saying that 2025 seemed to be a year of uncertainty, and boy was it. 2026 has been off to quite the start even just after a couple weeks and I don’t think the roller coaster is slowing down any time soon. But, cross my fingers, I look forward to being back here in another year with more charts and spreadsheets for you, you sickos. Take care of yourselves.