How I’m Building Retirement Income By Writing Fiction After 60

It's never too late to begin

 

A realistic plan for turning small book sales into steady, long-term income.

Retirement planning advice tends to follow a familiar script. Invest early. Diversify. Reduce risk. Draw down carefully. Hope the math holds.

At 60+, I understand that math more clearly than I did at 30. I also understand something else: even careful math does not eliminate uncertainty. Markets move. Costs rise. Inflation lingers longer than anyone predicts. And while pensions and savings provide structure, they do not always provide margin.

I am not trying to get rich online.

I am trying to build insulation.

Think of it less as constructing a mansion and more as adding storm shutters before the next economic squall rolls through. I don’t need fireworks. I need reinforcement.

For most of my working life, income came from labor. Time exchanged for wages. When that cycle slows or stops, the question becomes uncomfortable but unavoidable: what continues paying when I no longer clock in?

Traditional advice suggests dividends, real estate, or consulting. Those are valid paths. But not everyone is built for landlord duties, market speculation, or constant client acquisition. I know my wiring well enough to understand that I am not a natural salesman, not a hustler, and not someone energized by aggressive competition.

If there had been a childhood trophy for “Least Likely to Sell You a Newspaper Subscription,” I would have won it. My friend would have won the bike.

What I am is a writer.

And that realization is what changed the direction of this blog.

Over the past few years, I experimented with several common “make money online” approaches. Affiliate marketing review posts. Comparison articles. Traffic-building schemes. Systems that promised leverage if I simply followed the script closely enough.

Some of them taught useful structural skills. Many of them felt misaligned.

The comparison model, in particular, never sat well with me. Writing posts designed to highlight why one program was superior to another required a tone I could not fully inhabit. It felt less like analysis and more like positioning for commission. That may work for others. It did not work for me.

Eventually, I stepped back and asked a simpler question:

If I am going to build income at this stage of life, what kind of asset am I capable of creating consistently?

The answer was fiction.

Not because fiction is fast money. It isn’t.
Not because self-publishing guarantees success. It doesn’t.
But because fiction is intellectual property. And intellectual property is an asset class.

A book, once written, does not expire.
It does not decay.
It does not require warehouse storage.
It can be revised, repackaged, bundled, translated, or adapted.
It can sit quietly and earn small amounts for years.

That doesn’t make it magical. It makes it durable.

This blog will document how I am building retirement income from writing fiction after 60.

Not a fantasy plan.

Not a viral launch plan.

Not a “six figures in six months” plan.

A build-slow, compound-over-time plan.

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Why Fiction Is an Asset Class (Even at Modest Sales)

When people talk about “passive income,” they often picture large numbers. Thousands per day. Explosive launches. Overnight success.

That is not what I am building toward.

I am building toward modest, repeatable, compounding output.

Let’s use a deliberately conservative example.

Assume a novella is priced at $3.99. On Amazon’s standard royalty structure, that typically returns roughly 70% minus small delivery costs. To keep the math simple and conservative, let’s estimate the author earns about $2.60 per sale.

Now assume the book sells 40 copies per month.

Not 400.
Not 4,000.
Forty.

That’s just over one copy per day.

At $2.60 per sale:

40 sales × $2.60 = $104 per month.

That’s one modest book.

Now imagine three books, each selling at the same pace.

3 × $104 = $312 per month.

Still not retirement money. But no longer invisible.

Now imagine five books.

5 × $104 = $520 per month.

None of these numbers assume advertising. None assume bestseller lists. None assume social media virality.

They assume steady, low-volume, realistic sales.

This is not a promise. It's a pattern.

Of course, platforms take their commission. There are formatting costs. Covers may need upgrading. Time is invested up front.

But once written and published, the asset remains available for purchase every day without additional labor per copy.

A book does not need to explode to be useful.

It needs to persist.

The goal is not one book that performs spectacularly. The goal is a catalog that performs steadily.

One book selling one copy per day is a pleasant surprise. Five books doing that quietly becomes structural support.

That is the difference between chasing lightning and building scaffolding.

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The Earnable Story Framework

If fiction is going to function as an asset, it needs structure behind it.

Stories written casually and posted randomly may entertain, but they rarely compound.

To become income-producing assets, they need a path.

Here is the path I am using.

Not the only path.
Not a guaranteed path.
Just a structured one.

Step 1: Serialize to Test Engagement

I write and publish chapters online first, primarily on my writing site, FoxxfyrreWrites.com.

Not as a launch strategy, but as a refinement tool.

Serialization allows for early feedback, pacing adjustments, and — most importantly — proof that I can complete a full arc. Finishing a story is a skill. Serialization builds that muscle in public.

For example, my current supernatural thriller, Astral Rob, began as a serialized project on FoxxfyrreWrites.

It wasn’t launched with fanfare. It wasn’t marketed with ads. It was written, refined, and completed chapter by chapter.

Now it exists as a finished novella, ready to be formatted properly and released as a Kindle edition.

That transition — from serialized draft to structured digital book — is the exact mechanism this plan depends on.

The blog version tests stamina.
The book version becomes the asset.

FoxxfyrreWrites is where the creative work happens.
Nearing Retirement and Broke is where the financial architecture behind that work is documented.

One builds story.
The other builds structure.

Step 2: Remove the “Episode” Skin

Once the story is complete, I strip away the blog scaffolding. Episode titles become chapters. Cliffhanger markers soften. Transitions are smoothed.

The story becomes a book instead of a series of posts.

Step 3: Package as a Standalone Asset

The formatted manuscript becomes a Kindle eBook. Later, potentially a paperback. Eventually, perhaps an audiobook.

The key is ownership.

The story is not tied permanently to one platform. It is intellectual property that can travel.

Step 4: Let the Asset Sit

This may be the most uncomfortable step.

No aggressive launch. No frantic ad spend. No pleading for attention.

The book exists.

It accumulates slowly. Quietly. Indefinitely.

If it sells one copy per day, that is not failure. That is function.

Step 5: Repeat

One book is a project.
Two books are progress.
Five books are infrastructure.

The goal is not to chase a hit.

The goal is to build a shelf.

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Experience Is an Asset Class

While I am building my retirement plan around fiction, the principle applies far beyond storytelling.

By the time someone reaches 60, they are rarely starting from nothing. They are carrying decades of accumulated experience.

That experience has value. It just often hasn’t been packaged.

A grandmother with handwritten recipes passed down through generations is sitting on intellectual property.

A finishing carpenter who understands joinery techniques that modern contractors have forgotten holds technical knowledge that younger tradespeople may never learn in formal training.

A nurse with thirty years in one department understands workflow, stress management, and patient realities that never make it into textbooks.

None of these people need to become influencers.

They need to become archivists of their own expertise.

Experience can be turned into informational eBooks, niche guides, instructional manuals, specialized how-to series, or legacy cookbooks.

The mechanics are the same:

Write it clearly.
Package it professionally.
Distribute it digitally.
Let it persist.

The internet is full of shallow summaries written by people who read three articles and assembled a list.

It is surprisingly thin on deep, lived knowledge.

Seniors are often standing on reservoirs of insight they assume are ordinary.

They are not ordinary.

They are accumulated.

And accumulation is the foundation of any asset.

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The Timeline Reality

Writing income does not behave like hourly work.

You do not write for a week and collect a check the next.

The work is front-loaded. The payoff is back-loaded.

The first book may earn very little.

The second may earn slightly more.

Momentum builds not because one book explodes, but because the catalog grows.

If this takes three years to build into something meaningful, that is not failure. That is a build cycle.

Retirement planning already operates in decades. Creative asset building simply operates in years instead of weeks.

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Why I’m Building This in Public

I could quietly write books, upload them, and hope something sticks.

But that would miss the point.

If this works — even modestly — it works because the process is visible, repeatable, and honest.

I am not interested in selling blueprints I haven’t tested.

I am interested in documenting the build.

What works.
What doesn’t.
What earns.
What stalls.
What feels sustainable.
What feels like another full-time job in disguise.

If you are in your 50s or 60s and wondering whether your experience still has economic value, I suspect it does.

Maybe you’re not writing fiction.

Maybe you have a recipe book in a drawer.
Or woodworking techniques that aren’t taught anymore.
Or field knowledge from decades in a profession that younger people are Googling poorly.

You don’t need to become an influencer.

You need to become an archivist of your own expertise.

This blog will track my attempt to turn stories into income.

If you are trying something similar — fiction, guides, trade knowledge, memoir, anything rooted in lived experience — I’d genuinely like to hear about it.

Not as a pitch.
Not as a testimonial.
Just as field notes.

What have you tried?
What surprised you?
What stalled?
What worked better than expected?

Retirement planning often assumes decline.

I’m more interested in accumulation.

We are not starting over at zero.

We are starting with decades behind us.

That’s not a liability.

That’s inventory.

This is the first brick.

The next posts will show the build.

TTFN

Frank