A philosophy graduate student writes:
How much do philosophers tend to earn through their publications? Until recently I had assumed that journal articles never yield any direct financial reward whereas popular books can be quite lucrative, with things like less popular books, contributed chapters, erudite newspaper articles and LRB reviews falling at various points somewhere in between, but I have realised that I actually have very little idea how these things work and in particular no concrete information whatsoever. As a graduate student currently making the transition to young academic, I thought it important to rectify this and am rather embarrassed by my ignorance - does everyone else already know this stuff? If you don't think it suitable, thank you anyway for your time in considering my request and thank you very much also for your blog - it's brilliant, and the only one I read regularly.
My guess is most graduate students do not know much about this side of professional life, so it's worth opening up for discussion.
Here's the bottom line: the only publication on which philosophers make significant income are very widely used textbooks (i.e, ones widely assigned in undergraduate courses). Irving Copi's old logic textbook is a classic example (I am told he made hundreds of thousnads of dollars on it over the years), but there are probably other textbooks that generate 10-20K for their authors every year.
The amount earned on most other philosophical publications is very modest. A philosophy monograph that sells 1,000 copies is doing quite well; standard royalty rates are 8-12% (usually increasing as certain sales thresholds are reached), so one might earn a couple of thousand dollars on one's book over three or four years. "Popular" books in philosophy are pretty rare, and I am not aware of any big sellers, except Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit, which wasn't even written as popular philosophy. Even classics of philosophy in the modern era, like Rawls's A Theory of Justice, have purportedly sold only about a quarter-million copies over several decades, and one can count on one hand works in that category.
The Times Literary Supplement standardly pays about 500 GBP for an essay, and less or nothing for reviews (I am going on memory, I have not reviewed for them in awhile). Philosophers rarely write for newspapers, but perhaps some who have can comment on what compensation is like: again, I'm guessing pretty modest.
Thoughts and additional information and anecdotes from readers?
