The hourly wage of a rose

How much does a carpenter earn per hour? How much an electrician? How much a teacher, a waitress? Are there tips? Are there any additional payments? And why am I not using gender-inclusive language? ... So many questions!

I'm a writer and I sell a 200-page ebook for €4.99 on Amazon. How many hours did I spend writing this novel in my Rodiwana saga? And how many people won't read it because it's more expensive than a €0.99 ebook?

The new issue of Die Zeit (second week of May 2026) explores the meaning of "education" today. Another article examines the plight of a humanities graduate unable to find employment. – What still matters?

When I was still working as a teacher, everyone could join in the conversation, because after all, everyone went to school at some point.

Now I'm a writer, and everyone has their say, because these days everyone's writing a book. Or a ghostwriter is doing it, or AI. But then everyone's sitting on the red sofa in a talk show, and everyone can chime in.

Only those who pour their heart and soul into writing, and for whom writing is like breathing, truly know what it means to write for hours on end out of passion. But who are they?

You can't see it on a book cover. You don't know if its content was generated by AI for fun, if someone sat next to a footballer with champagne to write his biography, if someone with an existential crisis huddled alone in a small room, if a mother of three sought refuge in her keyboard, if a student suffered from heartbreak, if a businessman longed for even more success, or if a politician wanted a smoother profile.

Did I find any clichés? That's probably just stupid and human nature.

You look at a cover like you would at a wine bottle label. You're searching for a number, an award, but you don't know. You don't know what's behind the cover. You read the blurb. Like a wine review. And you buy the book.

You buy what "sells well" in bookstores. What's number one on the bestseller lists or published by your favorite publisher. Yet you might also be someone who otherwise criticizes manipulation and opinion-making and views the news critically, someone who has their own opinion, who forms their own? Someone who, even more than that: someone who engages with issues?

Popularity influences your personal reading preferences, but you probably don't realize it. A hyped book sells. Books that hardly anyone understands win awards, presumably because nobody understands them and everyone wants to look clever.

What I don't like right now is that there's so much talk about wages—far too low—and so much discussion about the importance of education, while at the same time, passionate writers, who bring so many stories and so much depth to their work, receive no visibility and earn nothing without a publisher or connections. No advertising, no publisher? No bestseller sticker...? Nada!

It's like playing the lottery. And hardly anyone talks about it. "Everyone" only knows the popular ones. Not only the writers, but also several generations of readers are forgotten in this hype. Manga and "spicy romance" dominate the market.

As I stood at my booth at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2023, a father confided in me that his daughter (who was standing across from me for an autograph) "only wanted to put the book on her shelf anyway—for a good photo on Instagram." She didn't intend to read it at all, but just to decorate it nicely. I immediately thought of a handbag. It was odd.

He asked me to sign one of my books. And I knew he wouldn't take a picture of his bookshelf, which was fine with me—more than that, it was a compliment! I wanted my story to leave images in his mind. It wouldn't be a handbag Instagram cover. Afterwards, he told me he enjoyed our conversation and hoped to find time to read soon, as he didn't have much time.

Speaking of time: I can't even calculate my "hourly wage". And yet I keep going, keep writing. Why?

Because I can't do otherwise. Writing is my passion and my calling. The writing process isn't about fame or money for me at all, but solely about letting everything flow from my fingertips, whatever my characters dictate to me. When I write, I'm completely immersed in them. It's incredibly soothing and inspiring.

Sometimes I watch myself writing, or just the text as it appears on my screen, while I mentally run through everything I'm writing. In doing so, I live and experience it all.

And then it's so wonderful and exhilarating to press the publish button. I feel like a whole world is exploding out there.

A day later, I wonder if I should advertise. Everyone does. Or many people I know. I don't want to advertise. I want my novels to find their own way to their readers. It's as if I've given birth to a child I'd like to let walk on its own. Like a doe looking down and only nudging the fawn to see if it can stand up.

My novels all wrote themselves. I don't care how perfect they are. Because I know they were born out of love. And passion. At this moment, I'm not even thinking about money, the book trade, or fame (is that a good thing?).

What I suddenly find myself wishing for—in the heat of the moment, amidst the writing—is a bestseller (so, yes, after all!?). And presumably, one day I'll say, "Hey, I'm number one on the Spiegel bestseller list!" I'll probably deny this blog post then. I'll probably write according to a plan (no, that's impossible, I never will!), but I'll have a timeline, a publisher, and suddenly a job with a very good hourly wage. One I could actually calculate.

In hardly any other profession is the range so enormous. As a writer, you either earn millions or 1-2 cents. The public's image of an author is antiquated.

If you go to a book fair, you'll see what really happens: Young women stand in front of shimmering silver covers, other young women queue for autographs, it's all about novels – "Romance with Spice." – Back in the day, they were probably called "penny dreadfuls." – You don't see any men there. They have pictures. Women apparently need texts.

Yes, I'm a woman too, and I need texts. But the ones I write myself. Born in 1972, I really do come from a completely different era. In my youth, authors (probably in that order) were something truly special. They were practically untouchable figures who wrote texts and stories that we studied in school: Goethe, Schiller, Büchner, Max Frisch, Günter Grass, Hermann Hesse, Siegfried Lenz, Heinrich Böll, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ilse Aichinger...

I personally always had a special fondness for Astrid Lindgren and "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

Saint-Exupéry has landed somewhere. Sometime. But he has most certainly landed within me with this sentence:

"One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

So I forget all the lost lines about an hourly wage, water my rose, tend to my planet, clean the stars and look at the moon.

Bente Amlandt

May 13, 2026

All drawings on this blog are mine.

Many of these are illustrations I created while writing my "Rodiwana" saga. This is the magical moonnut bush.