Bead Craft Idea

How much can you make writing & illustrating how to craft books?

I am a graphic designer. I can also draw, paint, bead, sew, garden and create merchandise with natural products. I would like to design how to craft books and patterns. I have pages of ideas in all of the above areas.

It depends a lot on the audience (how many people do this craft and would care about your book?) and the publisher. The good news is that for most niche markets (like beading, painting, gardening, etc.) there are smaller publishers who publish books only in that genre, and they are usually more willing to take unpublished authors than some of the larger ones are.

Often, smaller publishers will have a series of related books - a gardening series where one book is on annuals, one on perennials, one on landscaping, one on water gardens, etc. It doesn't really matter whether you're not previously published for these, since people are buying them based on the topic and maybe the series recognition. If you have an area of expertise - say, you could add a book on gazebos to the gardening series - contact the publisher to ask about how you could get involved, write/illustrate your book, and see what they say.

If you have a truly unique idea and are good at it, like a book on "101 crafts you can make with glass soda bottles," you may get a publisher to take your book hoping customers will see it in a store and pick it up out of interest for the topic. Writing the million and oneth book on "how to draw", though, probably won't do you much good.

The pay rate varies based on the publisher, sales made, topic, and type of book, so "how much you can make" really isn't something that's easy to answer - the quick response is "not enough for it to be your primary income" until you're famous or you've got several books under your belt, though.

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