In The Sims 3, a Self-Employed Author (SEA) is a Sim who spends most of his day writing books on his computer. When you think about that, it's a lonely, antisocial, boring enterprise. All they do is sit and type. That's it. Therefore, when developing one of these, you will give your Sim all the Traits that help them be, effectively, a book-producing machine. On top of that, your Sim will want to have Traits that increase profitability. It really is that simple.

Graduating college and reaching the heights of a Social Group are not necessary in order to become a successful SEA Sim - he will only need 5 Traits in order to do fine. However, to make him better, Lifetime Rewards (LTR) will pay off the most in the long run.


These are the two required Traits that every Self-Employed Author (SEA) requires:
Bookworm
Perfectionist


Use your LTR points for these two rewards first:
Acclaimed Author (30,000)
Profession Simoleon Booster (10,000)

These two LTR are probably not required but should be considered next in priority:
Entrepreneurial Mindset (10,000)
Opportunistic (10,000)


The above Traits and LTR cover the money-making aspect of a SEA Sim build. However, those are actually the small side of it. The much larger side is how to keep your SEA being content while sitting in front of a computer all day, as the key is volume. That is, we are talking about needs, wants, and mood.

There are Traits that assist with the fun and social needs:
Green Thumb (social; talk to plants)
Insane (social; talk to yourself)
Loner (less need to socialize in general)
Computer Whiz (more fun when playing video games)
No Sense of Humor (less need for fun in general)

There are no Traits that assist with the hunger, bladder, energy, or hygiene needs, but there are LTR for them. Your SEA Sim will do great with these:
Meditative Trance Sleep (30,000)
Hardly Hungry (25,000)
Dirt Defiant (15,000)
Steel Bladder (10,000)

There are helpful LTR for fun and social needs, but you will probably never need them:
Carefree (20,000) (more fun gained from fun stuff)
My Best Friend (40,000) (a SimBot to socialize with)

"The poor man's opera is the bed."

Lastly on the topic of your SEA Sim's needs, always keep in mind the single greatest method for freely and instantly raising your fun and social needs: Woo Hoo. The preparation is the real challenge, but a SEA Sim should not invest in Traits or LTR to assist with this. Instead, use the old-fashioned method: develop a strong friendship with another Sim as Children; augment that into love as Teenagers; and then wed them as Young Adults. (My advice: don't live together before the marriage; and save the first Woo Hoo until after the wedding.)


If your SEA has a bad mood, then it could prevent him from doing his job. So, his mood must be taken into consideration. So should other distractions. Here are some Traits that will help with your SEA Sim's mood:
Couch Potato
Hates the Outdoors
Slob

These LTR can also assist with your SEA Sim's mood or distraction-prevention; however, these should be considered as relatively low-priority:
No Bills Ever (15,000)
Stone-Hearted (10,000)


It is not even close which genre in The Sims 3 produces the greatest pay-off. Having run the math and proven the numbers in practice (pictures way down below), it is a simple fact that the Comic genre is hands-down the only way to go for a Self-Employed Author in The Sims 3. Sports genre is the #2, but it requires that your Sim take the Athletic Trait, which would make college graduation a requirement (for the additional Trait slot); and it does not pay as much as Comic (by thousands, each week). After that, the distant #3 is Children's genre, which is simply not worth the hassle needed in order to maximize its earning potential, which is way, way below the Comic genre's. After that, don't even bother looking... the remaining 20 genres will only provide a tiny fraction of the earnings that the Comic genre provides - they are a total waste of time and resources.

Of course, you will build your SEA Sim's Writing Skill to skill level (SL) 10; and you will also need SL1 of either Painting or Street Art in order to get started. You can begin developing Writing as early as a Toddler (there are three books that your parents can read to you that will get your Sim to SL3) and then hammering it as a Child and as a Teenager.

In all cases, when trying to build any skill's levels, do it at the Public Library. This includes writing your Comic books there until your SEA Sim has maxed their three skills, which will each develop automatically as you write - no need to study these skills when becoming an optimized SEA.


The omission of the Artistic Trait in this guide is because its only speeds up the learning of the Painting and Writing skills. That is, once your Sim hits SL10 of the Writing Skill, then the Artistic Trait becomes useless. To the contrary, in my experience, Public Library computer Comic book writing builds the Writing, Painting, and Street Art skills gosh darn fast enough.

If you wanted to use cheat codes in order to start with the Artistic Trait and then remove it once the skills are maxed-out, that could be an option; but you really don't need to do that. Not only will you be rich as the royalties start mounting up, but the skills develop automatically while you are writing; and the Public Library is awesome for this.


To close this first section, here is a summary that includes the best advice for developing your Self-Employed Author Sim.

1) Meet a nice person as a Child; go steady with them as a Teenager; and then marry them as a Young Adult. Your counterpart should respect your personality: you want to be alone; you're not funny; you won't go outside; and writing comes before them. Also, they must be willing to provide sweet, sweet Woo Hoo every single day - maybe even twice on some days.

2) Get SL1 in either the Painting or Street Art skill and SL1 in the Writing skill. Then exclusively write Comic genre books, ad nauseam, for the rest of your life. Register in the Self-Employed Writer profession via City Hall.

3) Graduating from college (doesn't matter what degree, even if an Honorary Degree LTR) and reaching Level 8+ of the Nerd Social Group so that your SEA Sim can have seven slots for character Traits are optional. You can still build a good SEA with only five Trait slots.

4) Give your SEA Sim these seven character Traits (in this order) or just settle for the top five if you did not do Step #3 above:
Bookworm
Perfectionist
Loner
No Sense of Humor
Hates the Outdoors
Couch Potato
Slob

5) Here is the priority list for Lifetime Rewards (in order):
Acclaimed Author (30,000)
Profession Simoleon Booster (10,000)
Entrepreneurial Mindset (10,000)
Opportunistic (10,000)
Meditative Trance Sleep (30,000)
Hardly Hungry (25,000)
Dirt Defiant (15,000)
Steel Bladder (10,000)
No Bills Ever (15,000)
Stone-Hearted (10,000)
Carefree (20,000)

In The Sims 3, there are technically 23 genres to choose from when writing a book. As mentioned above, mathematically there is only one choice for which genre to write as a Self-Employed Author: the Comic book genre (which requires the University expansion pack). If you don't mind incorporating the Athletic Trait into your Sim's life (which might also tempt you away from your computer desk) and the lower earnings, then the Sports book genre is a good one, too. (Without the Athletic Trait, the Sports genre is a bust.) But any other genre is not advised for a professional writer in The Sims 3 - the returns on their investments pale in comparison to the Comic genre by far.


If you want your Sim to be what I call a "Writing Hobbyist," and you don't care about the Simoleons, then do whatever you want! There are genres whose earnings are boosted by certain Traits that your Sim might have. Just always remember that the Comic genre has no Trait requirements and will earn the most money by far - nothing else comes close.


Here is an example from my experience: my Sim wrote 2,000 pages for 1 Masterpiece book, which is equivalent to 33 Comic books. He earned $9,600 for that Masterpiece, and it took him several days to write it. The royalty range for his Comic books has been between 400 and 1,000 Simoleons, so I put the average around 700 Simoleons each. This means that 33 comic books came out to over 23,000 Simoleons over the same time period and page count.

What I ended up doing was setting a goal to grind out 6 Comic books a day for six weeks, which would provide the optimum weekly royalty. In order to do this, I needed the first five Traits and the first eight LTR listed in the section above, plus the usable spouse. Here are the results of that six-week (in-game) period, where I probably could have done even a bit more at times to squeak out a few more Comic books:

I have mentioned that we are building a "book-producing machine." So, why not make an actual machine: a Plumbot? Why not make six of them, so that you and your spouse can live the high life while your robots toil for you?

Managing a full 8-member household is the most challenging thing to do in The Sims 3, but keeping your Plumbots locked in a room with desks and computers and recharging them when their batteries are low are not that difficult, only mundane. They learn their skills pretty quickly, especially with the right Trait Chips installed. I refer to writing Plumbots as "WriterBots."

Using low-range estimates, I figure that with 6 WriterBots, they can together write about 35 Comic books a day (so, maybe 240 a week) all fetching on average about 600 Simoleons apiece, which totals to 145,000 Simoleons weekly (give or take), which is then compounded weekly over a 6-week period, culminating into more than 850,000 Simoleons in a week if you stayed true throughout that whole time period!

You got the guts for that? It really is a grind, but not as difficult as running 8 Sims at a time with different lifestyles and goals, etc. With the WriterBots, you just watch for the notifications that they have completed their Comic books and then tell them to write another one or go recharge their batteries. You can have your one or two fleshy Sims do whatever, as their WriterBot army rakes them some serious coin.


In order to make the best WriterBots, you will want to have your Sim get to Skill Level (SL) 10 in Bot Building. Once you've done that, you will need to use a Reventlov's Bot Workshop so you can craft the Nanites necessary for the Trait Chips that your WriterBots need. More than likely, you will need to visit the local Bot Emporium in town in order to purchase Blank Processors and maybe even some already completed Trait Chips or Nanites. Then you just craft your Plumbots and set them up with the following Trait Chips (and no other ones):
Office Drone
Limitless Learning
Efficient

The Office Drone is a Trait Chip that your Sim can make at SL6 Bot Building. It will need 1 Lepton Nanite, 1 Quantum Nanite, and 2 Small Blank Processors.

The Limitless Learning Trait Chip becomes available at SL8 Bot Building. It requires 1 Tunneling Nanite and 3 Medium Blank Processors.

Lastly, the Efficient Trait Chip becomes available at SL10 Bot Building. It requires 1 Thermo Nanite, 2 Medium Blank Processors, and 1 Large Blank Processor.

Your Sim will want to craft each of these three Trait Chips for each "WriterBot," as I call these Plumbots. Also, if you wait until your Sim is at the SL10 Bot Building skill, then the Plumbots will come out much better at their points of creation.

Your WriterBots will learn their skills faster than fleshy Sims do, which is appreciated. The first thing to do is get them SL1 in Writing and either Painting or Street Art - the Public Library will make this happen very quickly. The next thing to do is register them at City Hall in the Self-Employed Writer profession. The penultimate thing to do is utilize the Public Library as the location for writing Comic books until your WriterBots hit SL10 in their three Comic book skills (which are developed automatically as they write). The last thing to do is make a nice, comfortable, well-decorated (high Environment score), and locked room for your Plumbots in which to endlessly toil away at writing Comic books. Get the nice furniture and have a desk and computer for each Plumbot. Having a Nexus-9 Non-Organic Charging Station for each Plumbot is a nice touch, too.

Lastly, the WriterBots will automatically put themselves on their charging stations when they are low on batteries; but you will have to pay attention if any are standing around doing nothing, fully charged. Compared to monitoring Sims, this level of Plumbot management is really not that hard, albeit a bit dull. The most fun part is pressing right up to in-game Sundays at 12:00 PM to watch those Simoleons come in! You can also click on the Skills tab for your Plumbot and click on the Skill Journal for the Writing skill to get an idea of the underlying mathematics involved and what to expect come payday each in-game week.

With your lonesome SEA and locked-away WriterBots toiling away and earning you sweet, sweet cash every day (and especially on Sundays), there is still yet one more way to make even more coin off these guys: consignment.

A Sim with the Born Salesman trait and the Suave Seller lifetime reward should be the one to check the mail every day and collect all those Comic Books being written. Then, take those to the nearest Consignment Store and hawk them.

Beyond that, the author can order more book copies, which get delivered in the mail. Imagine having a job where all you do every day is check a mailbox and then sell books on consignment. Also, if you are not interested in managing an army of WriterBots but want a SEA who just lives alone with his spouse, then switching out the No Sense of Humor trait with Born Salesman (and making sure to get the Suave Seller LTR) would give you a nice little lifestyle there.