Chess job-career $$ ??

Hello, I am curious to learn more about the people that their main ''job'' is playing chess. International masters or Grandmasters I heard they get paid for attending to tournaments and can earn 100 000$US a year. Also they can write chess books and I wonder how much $ they make from those and if it's worth the time. Are there any IM or GM that would like to talk about their career? Or just other people to give their opinions/thoughts too would be cool.

For myself I live in Canada and am student, sometimes and mostly in the summer, sometimes there are tournaments where prizes range from 300 to 700$. It's quite good pocket money but that alone would not make a living so I wondered what do IM's and Grand Masters do for a living?

I remember their being a forum about this recently, and after looking through the forums, I found it at http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-much-money-can-gms-earn. Enjoy

Thanks. Interesting, from what I've read, grandmasters get their expenses paid when attending to tournaments and International masters give lessons for living and also publish books.

ya, you can make it a career if you can get your rating over 2300ish. Mostly from teaching not playing. You need to be over 2500 to think of only playing for the most part.

TO get rich you need to be top 10 or so and playing all the world champ cycles.

All tho there are alot of teachers here in the US doing very well just teaching.