Filing Schedule C and Writing Off Expenses for Your Author Business

A comprehensive guide to tax deductions for self-employed writers (for enterprises of all sizes and income levels)

Dec 12, 2025

∙ Paid

Important: I’m not a tax pro, accountant, or lawyer—just a small businessperson who has been preparing and filing my own Schedule Cs for over 25 years. This article shares what I’ve learned from my own research and experience, but it’s not meant to be comprehensive or exhaustive. Tax rules change and your circumstances may be different, so please consult a qualified tax professional for advice tailored to your specific needs.

What Is Schedule C?

Schedule C (Profit or Loss from Business) is the IRS form that self-employed authors—whether that is full-time, part-time, or very part-time—use to report their income from writing and other business activities and business expenses on their personal tax return. Whether you’re self-published, traditionally published, or a hybrid author, if you’re earning money from royalties, advance payments, rights sales, or other activities as an independent contractor (events fees, consulting, ghostwriting, freelance editing, etc.) rather than as an employee, you’ll typically file a Schedule C.

This form allows you to deduct legitimate business expenses, reducing your taxable income and ultimately lowering what you owe in taxes. The net profit you calculate on Schedule C is subject to both income tax and self-employment tax (covering Social Security and Medicare), making it essential to track and claim all eligible deductions throughout the year.

Below I provide some general tips and more information on categories of expenses.

Essential Tips Before Filing Schedule C

Ideally, you’ll come to understand Schedule C preparation as a year-round process rather than a tax-season scramble, but if you’re reading this in tax season and realizing you haven’t tracked much, you can still pull together what you have for this year and commit to better systems and practices going forward.

Record-Keeping & Documentation

Keep business and personal expenses separate, and this is best achieved with a dedicated bank account and, if desired, a business-specific credit card for author expenses. (To whatever extent, you have a business as an author and you should act as such.)
Document in a dedicated notebook or computer file the business purpose of expenses, especially for items that could be questioned (like meals, travel, or gifts) and how you arrived at figures (such as when you use a percentage of your home as a workplace/business office).
Create a folder on your computer labeled something like “Business Expenses – 2025.” Inside that folder, create 12 more folders, one for each month of the year. Rather than keeping a mix of paper and electronic receipts, take a photo of every paper receipt and once a month move all photo receipts into that month’s folder. You can move electronic receipts to the appropriate month as you receive them.
Save contracts, royalty statements, and 1099 forms that prove your income in one accessible spot.

The Hobby Loss Rule

The IRS has a “3 out of 5 years” rule mandating that you should show a profit in at least three of the last five years to avoid being classified as a hobby rather than a business (you can deduct expenses for businesses, but not for hobbies). However, newer authors can still deduct expenses while building their business—just be prepared to show that you’re operating with a profit motive, i.e., you have a business plan, take a professional approach, have thoughtful marketing campaigns. Even better, you use the Profit First method.

Estimated Quarterly Taxes

If you expect to owe $1,000 or more in taxes for any given year, you’ll likely need to make quarterly estimated tax payments to avoid penalties.
This is especially important as there’s no employer withholding taxes from your author income. You need the discipline, fortitude, integrity to set the government’s share aside on your own. Again, the Profit First method helps tremendously in this regard.

Deduction Standards

Expenses must be “ordinary and necessary” for your author enterprise, but if you are new to business, you may be surprised at the extent of what’s deductible. See below.
You can only deduct the business-use percentage of mixed-use items (e.g., home office, vehicle, mobile phone plan).

When to Get Professional Help

Consider consulting a tax professional if your income is substantial, you have complex deductions, or you’re unsure about classifications

Finally, even if you don’t do your taxes yourself, read through the following dive into types of eligible expenses so you can keep proper records and receipts for your accountant or the person in your home who does your household’s taxes.