Wanna write? Write Romance!

This quote was on the kboards, from a 2012 article in The Guardian (which seems to write a lot about writing):

"Those who want to do best at self-publishing, they found, would be well advised to focus on romantic fiction. Romance authors earned 170% more than their peers, while authors in other genres fared much worse: science-fiction writers earned 38% of the $10,000 average, fantasy writers 32%, and literary fiction authors just 20% of the $10,000 average.

"It's also best to be female, educated and in your early 40s: the survey's "top earners" -- those who indicated they could live exclusively off their earnings -- were 68% female, and 33% had a degree, compared to an average of 28%. High earners also dedicated more of their time to their writing, churning out 2,047 words a day on average, as compared to 1,557 for the rest of the sample."

And this thread on the kboards really rams home the need for speed. Writing is just like The Fast and the Furious, just without Vin Diesel or cars or chases or explosions and a lot more typing:

"The next thing you must have is speed and you must create volume. This is to give you the BEST chance at success. Are there writers who succeed without putting out a large volume of work? Yes, but its much harder to accomplish. The less work you put out, the less chance you have of success. You can argue this point all you want. And I don't care if some world-crushing literary light only had one book in his whole life and he was feted by the entire literary establishment."

…In order to do this work, you must be fast. I say that at a minimum, you want to be doing 2-3k words of nearly publishable fiction per day, five days a week. That gives you the ability to churn out 10-15k words a week, and so you're getting out a short book a month, or perhaps a few shorter serialized books a month."

The writer, who goes by the handle Gorvnice, makes some very good points about how to write for a living. It's both sobering and inspirational stuff.