Novels by Frank Goosen | Can you make a living from it?

In »Play!« two 50-year-olds with no football experience become coaches of a C youth team Photo: IMAGO/Zoonar It's just a side note, but one that makes you suspicious. Where the information on the year of publication and edition is given, there is the note: "The work on this book was supported by funds from the Corona emergency aid from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and by a scholarship from the Kunststiftung NRW." So it is a subsidized novel. Strange. Wasn't Frank Goosen once a best-selling author?

Indeed. Back in 2001, he (“Learn to lie down”) and Sven Regener (“Mr. Lehmann”) created a monument to the slacker – the drifting, disoriented, career-uninterested baby boomer. They were books in which not much happened (certainly not professionally and a lot of things in private life also came to nothing), which is why male readers in particular, whose lives also didn't have much happening, recognized themselves in them. Both novels were made into films and were released in cinemas in 2003. But despite all the parallels in terms of content and time, there was one essential difference. “Herr Lehmann” sold over one and a half million copies, “Learning to lie down” sold around 150,000 copies.

What that meant financially: While Sven Regener earned over two million euros gross, Frank Goosen earned around a quarter of a million. And Regener subsequently proved to be the more business-minded. Because readers like the familiar, he subsequently published two more novels in which Mr. Lehmann played the main role ("Neue Vahr Süd", "The Little Brother"). Both books sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Frank Goosen, on the other hand, took a different path with “Pokorny laughs”. Only 40,000 readers wanted to follow him on this - that's around 60,000 euros gross. That's not an excessive salary for a book that he wrote for almost two years. And yet: 40,000 copies sold are considered a huge success in an industry in which most novels do not sell 4,000 copies.

You have to be able to afford to be a writer. Only a few, like Daniel Kehlmann and Juli Zeh, can make a living from book sales alone. Multi-talented people therefore have an advantage. Frank Goosen had already been active as a cabaret artist for years before he published “Learn to lie down”. Together with Jochen Malmsheimer he formed the Tresenlesen duo. The two had over 900 performances under their belt when they fell out in 2000. Afterwards they both continued solo. Which at least had the advantage that the fee no longer had to be shared (by the way, they have been performing together again since 2020).

In addition, there is income from readings. A similar development has taken place here as with concerts. Because the artistic product (albums, books) generates less and less money, live performances have to pay a lot more. Ticket prices for readings have tripled in the last 20 years. 6 to 7 euros have become 20. Frank Goosen will be fine. By the way, if you want to listen to Daniel Kehlmann or Juli Zeh in person, you pay upwards of 35 euros - for that you could experience Bruce Springsteen for three hours in the mid-90s.

Literary prizes are also a welcome source of income. And since there are over 1,100 of them in Germany, they have already filled the budget holes of numerous writers. Frank Goosen won the Ruhr Literature Prize in 2003. At that time he received 10,000 euros for this; today the prize is endowed with 15,000 euros.

You have to be able to afford to be a writer.

If you want to write without having to work a 40-hour job, you can also apply for a work scholarship. The catch: you have to finish it quickly. Many scholarships are limited to three to six months. The monthly support is usually between 1000 and 1500 euros.

Residence is an important criterion. The Alfred Döblin scholarship is only available for Berlin authors. And while the Cultural Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia supports its future literary prodigies with 2,000 euros a month for up to two years, things are looking poor in Rhineland-Palatinate. Frank Goosen could be happy that he lives in Bochum (NRW) and not in Trier (RLP).

He made good use of his scholarship from the Kunststiftung NRW. You can notice the fine tuning in his book »Play it!«. Here an author had all the time in the world to fine-tune the dialogue and develop a simple story - two 50-year-olds with no football experience becoming coaches of a C-youth team - into a multi-faceted, detailed novel.

This was appreciated by the readership. »Play it!« made it to number 12 on the Spiegel bestseller list. However, there should be no cheering songs. The rule of thumb in the industry is: the second place sells only half as well as the first place, and the third place only sells half as well as the second place. So Frank Goosen will have to continue doing cabaret to get his cut - which isn't bad news for his fans.

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