How do writers of plays make money?

Question:Those that do make money get it from several potential sources:

1) Production royalties. Anyone who wants to perform the play must pay fees. The professional playwrights generally get their work listed by one of the big licensing agencies, Samuel French or Dramatists' Play Service or (if it's a musical) Rodgers and Hammerstein. The licensing agency sets fees, generally based on the type of theatre company (professional, amateur, educational), the number of performances, the size of the auditorium.

Special licensing is required if there will be a video of the performance, and more special licensing if that video will be broadcast or shown to the general public in any way (restricted-use videos for educators are permitted under certain licenses). Those types of arrangement will yield even more royalties.

2) Publication. The author gets a cut of every copy of the play that's sold. If it's copies for use in a performance, often those are sold by the licensing agency; some of the more famous plays get printed in paperback versions or in collections. Then there are the rare old cases where a play would run in a popular magazine or newspaper--those days are gone with the decline of print media.

3) Residuals. Sort of a post-production royalty, if a play is produced for the media and then released in some tangible form to the public again, the author gets residuals. Arthur Miller, for example, got royalties for the TV production of "Death of a Salesman" (great work by Dustin Hoffman, Charles Durning, and a young John Malkovich as Biff). Then the show was released on VHS and Miller would have gotten a few sheckels for every copy sold.

4) Rarely, a very important playwright will be paid for personal appearances--say, goes on the lecture circuit or pops up on a TV show.

5) There's also money to be made from teaching, for example doing a workshop for aspiring playwrights or pikcing up a creative writing class to teach at a college.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Those that do make money get it from several potential sources:

1) Production royalties. Anyone who wants to perform the play must pay fees. The professional playwrights generally get their work listed by one of the big licensing agencies, Samuel French or Dramatists' Play Service or (if it's a musical) Rodgers and Hammerstein. The licensing agency sets fees, generally based on the type of theatre company (professional, amateur, educational), the number of performances, the size of the auditorium.

Special licensing is required if there will be a video of the performance, and more special licensing if that video will be broadcast or shown to the general public in any way (restricted-use videos for educators are permitted under certain licenses). Those types of arrangement will yield even more royalties.

2) Publication. The author gets a cut of every copy of the play that's sold. If it's copies for use in a performance, often those are sold by the licensing agency; some of the more famous plays get printed in paperback versions or in collections. Then there are the rare old cases where a play would run in a popular magazine or newspaper--those days are gone with the decline of print media.

3) Residuals. Sort of a post-production royalty, if a play is produced for the media and then released in some tangible form to the public again, the author gets residuals. Arthur Miller, for example, got royalties for the TV production of "Death of a Salesman" (great work by Dustin Hoffman, Charles Durning, and a young John Malkovich as Biff). Then the show was released on VHS and Miller would have gotten a few sheckels for every copy sold.

4) Rarely, a very important playwright will be paid for personal appearances--say, goes on the lecture circuit or pops up on a TV show.

5) There's also money to be made from teaching, for example doing a workshop for aspiring playwrights or pikcing up a creative writing class to teach at a college.

Most don't ,an artist in any field has troulble making any money struggling artist.

The only way they make money is if they sell it to a theatre troupe and the troupe uses it. Writers are struggling for pay constantly.

it's really hard.