Who actually writes?

Who counts as an "author" depends on who is counting. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks people who report writing as their main job. The Authors Guild surveys self-identified published authors (most of whom hold day jobs). Census data measures occupational identity, not hobby. This page makes the differences explicit and gives you the right number for the right question.

How many writers are there?

Data USA, aggregating US Census American Community Survey occupational data, counts 183,220 working writers and authors in the United States as of 2024. That is the population reporting writing as their primary occupation.

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook tracks the same category using its own methodology and reports a smaller employment figure (135,400 jobs in 2024). The two numbers differ because Data USA pulls from the broader ACS while BLS uses its narrower Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. BLS projects employment growth of 4% from 2024 to 2034, slightly slower than the all-occupation average, with about 13,400 openings per year. The growth comes mostly from online media and self-publishing, which partially offsets the contraction in traditional print journalism.

The wider population of "people who write books" is much larger. The Authors Guild 2023 survey reached 5,699 published authors, and the Alliance of Independent Authors estimates 1 to 2 million people have self-published a book in the past five years. Most of those are not in the BLS census because writing is not their primary employment.

Gender

Women make up 59.4% of the US writers and authors workforce. This is a meaningful shift over the last two decades. NBER research published in 2023 (summarized in the NBER Digest, drawing on Joel Waldfogel's working paper on US book-market authorship) documents the rising share of female-authored books over recent decades. Specific year-by-year crossover thresholds vary by methodology, but the directional trend is well established across multiple sources.

The trend goes in the same direction across genres but at different paces. Romance has been majority-female for decades. Literary fiction was male-dominated through most of the 20th century and reached parity in the 2010s. Fantasy and sci-fi historical-male skew has narrowed considerably since 2015 but is still tilted male in traditional publishing. In self-publishing, women lead by a wider margin than in traditional, especially in romance, romantasy, and contemporary fiction.

Age

The average age of working US writers is 42.5 (Data USA). Compared to other creative occupations, this skews older. Writing has a longer ramp than acting or visual art, both because the craft takes years to develop and because most writers hold other jobs while building a career.

Two practical implications. First, debut at 30+ is normal in this field, not late. The most-cited debut novelist age figure (mid-30s) traces to a 2010 self-reported survey by author Jim C. Hines and is widely repeated, though there is no recent authoritative survey to anchor a single number. Second, the field has lower attrition than most. Writers who have been at it for 10 years often keep going for another 30. Career writing is a marathon by industry composition, not just by aspiration.

Education

Roughly 83% of working US writers hold at least a bachelor's degree, making this one of the more education-heavy occupations in the labor market. About 31% hold a graduate degree, often an MFA, MA, JD, or PhD. The graduate-degree share is highest in technical writing, journalism, and academic-adjacent writing; lowest in genre fiction self-publishing.

Education does not predict income for working writers as cleanly as you might expect. The highest-earning indie genre authors often do not hold MFAs; the highest-earning literary novelists frequently do. Education correlates with the type of writing more than with the income.

Income

The BLS-tracked working writer population earns dramatically more than the broader self-identified author population, because the BLS counts only people for whom writing is their main income source.

That is a different number from the Authors Guild $5,000 median total income figure for 2022. The reconciliation: Authors Guild surveys self-identified published authors (who in most cases hold day jobs). BLS measures the narrower population whose primary occupation is writing. For "what do I earn if I become a working full-time writer," BLS is the relevant number. For "what do I earn if I publish a book on the side," Authors Guild is.

For deeper income breakdowns by genre, by indie versus traditional, see the dedicated author income page.

Race and ethnicity

The US writers and authors workforce in 2024 was 77.3% White, with 8.4% identifying as Hispanic or Latino, per Data USA. Compared to the broader US workforce, that is a less diverse occupation.

The Lee & Low 2023 Diversity Baseline Survey (DBS 3.0, released in 2024, covering the broader publishing workforce including editors and marketers, not just authors) consistently finds that the publishing pipeline is heavily White and college-educated, which both reflects and shapes who gets published. Self-publishing has somewhat democratized access — writers without traditional gatekeeping can reach readers — but demographic data on indie authors specifically remains thin.

Where do writers live?

Geographically, the working writer population concentrates around the publishing and media industries:

• New York City metro. Largest single concentration. Big-five publishing, magazines, journalism.
• Los Angeles. Heavy in screenwriters and entertainment journalism; lighter in book authors.
• Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco, Chicago. Secondary clusters around academic, policy, and tech-adjacent writing.
• Remote / dispersed. The fastest-growing segment. Working writers based outside traditional publishing hubs have been gaining share since 2015, accelerated by the post-2020 remote-work shift.

Self-published authors trend even more dispersed. ALLi data finds top-earning indies based well outside New York or LA, often in lower-cost regions where a moderate indie income (e.g., $50,000) goes much further. The "must live in NYC to be a real writer" idea is largely dead in the indie tier, and weakening even in the traditional one.

Full-time vs part-time

BLS notes that many US writers and authors are self-employed and that part-time and freelance work is common, though it does not publish a clean full-time/part-time split for the occupation. Among published book authors specifically, the Authors Guild 2023 survey found 35% self-identify as full-time, but the full-time median total income of $20,000 sits below the federal poverty line for a family of three. Most published authors subsidize their writing through other work.

This is the data point that matters most for new writers. The realistic image of the published author population is not "full-time novelist with no day job." It is "person who writes seriously and consistently alongside other work, sometimes for years before going full-time, sometimes never going full-time at all." The economics make the career structure look this way.

How this data ages

Three trends to watch over the next 5 years:

The full-time indie share keeps rising. Authors Guild 2023 showed established self-pub authors' median income up 76% from 2018. If that trend continues, the full-time-author population will tilt indie, not traditional, by 2030.

The age curve is shifting younger in indie, older in traditional. Young writers increasingly skip the agent-and-five-publisher path because the economics of self-publishing improved faster than the economics of advance-based traditional. Traditional publishing's debut authors are skewing older as the path takes longer.

Geographic dispersal continues. Remote writing was already location-flexible. The accelerated shift since 2020 will not reverse. Expect the percentage of working writers in NYC, LA, and the Bay Area to keep slowly contracting through 2030.

Related reading:

• How much do authors earn? Income data with genre and indie breakdowns.
• Genre word counts. The length expectations of each segment.
• Daily routines of famous writers. What working writers actually do day to day.