How to make more impactful statements with numbers
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THOUGHTS:
Ask for, and give, numbers
Regarding career/financial advice:
Here are some pieces of advice I’ve heard regarding books, jobs, and social media. I appreciate people sharing their numbers, but this advice makes no sense to me:
😕 “I’ve experienced insane growth on TikTok by posting 5x/day for a month!”
—someone with 477 followers (less than 0.3% of what I have, and I post <1x/week)
😕 “Almost no one gets any sort of book advance these days. Be happy to get $1.”
😕“No one would work full-time for anything less than $250k/year.”
😕“No one would write for less than $1.50/word.”
😕 “$150/hour is nothing.”
Those first two sound horribly low to me—warnings not to do what they did—and the last three numbers sound wonderfully high despite being described as low! Everyone has hugely different definitions of those things.
Some of this inconsistency may be because people conflate “what you should get” with “what you could get.” When you calculate what you need to live, you may encounter reports saying you require numbers such as a $70,000 salary to live comfortably as a single person in NYC or $300,000 to live comfortably with kids in several American cities. So…sure, you should get those rates. (Side note: I lived on $39,000/year as a single person in NYC…but it was far from comfortable. I couldn’t even pay the interest on my student loans, let alone buy a single coffee.)
However, note that the median personal income in the US is something like $42,000/year. That doesn’t mean it’s okay, but it is a reality for many people, and it would be silly for people with those wages, like myself, to evade jobs paying $299,999/year just because it’s “too low” by others’ standards.
Book advances are especially all over the place! They can be $250 or $2.5 million. Author/editor/publishing professional Gina Denny says the median debut advance is $60k, and this article says the average is $57k.
It’s all up to you, and of course, you/your agent should try to play offers off of each other, consider other factors with different publishers, etc.
So, I try to share numbers where I can. Here are some of my numbers on how much I got and spent on my book. (Premium post, but if you really want to see it without paying, LMK, and I’ll forward it to you.) And the point I’m making is similar in concept to my recent post “On the Problem with ‘Most’ Advice,” here:
In your writing:
Numbers can make such a difference in making a point. When you’re field reporting, stop and count things. Ask for numbers whenever possible, and see if you can get data.
If someone says “a lot,” or “not much",” ask how much, and try not to let them off the hook, at least until you have a range or a firm confirmation that they will never say. Always ask an open-ended question before trying to guess—I find it really annoying when people try to guess the answer to a question that I was about to tell them.
But, if that doesn’t work, consider throwing some guesses out so they can correct you. People don’t like being asked the same question multiple times, but they also hate hearing something wrong about themselves. Consider throwing out some outrageous numbers and see if they correct you.
Here’s an example script (you are the 🐦⬛, the source is the 🧑🦲):
🐦⬛: “How much money did you get from the company?” [Note: NOT “Did you get a lot?” That’s a yes-no question.]
🧑🦲: “Not much.”
🐦⬛: “How many dollars?”
🧑🦲: “Not much.”
🐦⬛: “Like $30?”
🧑🦲: “Oh, more than that.”
🐦⬛: “Like a million dollars?”
🧑🦲: “Less than that!”
….and on and on, and I’ll bet you can get into a range. Sometimes, they’ll offer an analogy, like “the salary of a mid-tier dentist.” If you get a chance, look up what that is, and then guess again. “Oh, so I should write ‘around $170,000?’”
Here are some examples of specifics making huge differences in my reporting. See how you think/feel after the first statement vs. the second one:
This is a start:
🆗 “It’s not worth it to amputate a dog’s tail just in case they might break it later. That’s like cutting off your pinky toe to ‘prevent injury.’ The welfare cost of generalized childhood tail-docking is not worth the small chance of eliminating an already tiny risk.”
Are you convinced? No? Consider these numbers:
✅ “A study found that one must amputate the tails of 500 dogs to prevent a single tail injury, even in working dogs.”A start:
🆗 “There were a lot of bones around, even for me.”
Do you think you and I have the same definition of “a lot of bones?” No? Consider these numbers:
✅ “I found 25 horse skeletons in his field.”
A start:
🆗 “Man, people must really love their dead pets because they pay a lot to freeze-dry them.”
You already know people love their pets, but would a specific price hit home a little more?:
✅ Most pet processors won’t tell me how much they charge—it probably fluctuates a lot, and they don’t want to advertise a price that they aren’t going to honor when the book is out in 2 years or for an animal that’s too big, etc.* But this website says they offer freeze-drying pets between $650 and over $2,600.A start:
🆗 “That protorohippus fossil was worth a lot of money.”
Stronger:
✅ “Smithsonian paid in the high six-figures for it.” (Yes, I wish I could get more specifics on that. Another interesting fact is that it helped pay for the seller’s cancer treatment.)
*Of course, if someone really doesn’t want to share a number, that’s up to them. There are good reasons and bad reasons to keep details secret. For instance, if someone doesn’t want to share the name of their town for privacy reasons, they also shouldn’t share the exact population because readers could use that info to narrow down which town it is. (But if they say they’re keeping their salary secret because it’s illegal to share salaries, tell them no the hell it isn’t!)
I’d love to hear your examples as well, whether you read or wrote them!
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