PDL players are amateurs - no, they do not get paid. The two professional divisions do pay their players, but there is no set pay scale. Each team makes their own amounts.
Nobody is getting rich playing soccer in the A-league or the PDL. Consider this a guy on the Kansas City Wizards recently quit to become a teacher. YES A TEACHER!!!!!!!!!!!!! because he made a living wage as oppossed to 11k a year. THats the MLS. Now some guys on USL div one teams can command 25-30k and an apartment but thats SOME GUYS. Most make nothing or next to it. PDL - nothing. The book UNLUCKY by Dave O'Grady ( I think) chronicled the North Virginia Royals and he said when players brought up money to the boss he shot back he was giving them $ 5000.00 dollars a year in exposure but nothing that was actually minted by the US Treasury. USL Div 1- Top players like a goal scorer or goaltender will get 25-30k and an apartment, most players are there to get to somewhere else orhave been given a job by the team and a cut of the soccer camps. Some teams have guys from England and Liberia etc but most foreign players are trying to get a US green card or Canadian landed immigrant card. USL Div 2- Nothing. See PDL.
Northern Virginia is not PDL - thus, if that book talked about them, it is inaccurate, unless they were once in PDL, but for as long as I've known about them, they've always been D3 or USL Div. 2. Regardless, most teams in that level pay their players very little - they get their money doing camps, etc.
Top players in USL1 may make more than 25-30k. In his last season, Eric Wynalda turned down 75k from MLS claiming that the Charleston Battery had offered him a better deal. Also, many USL1 and USL2 players make additional income by playing in the MISL; many USL teams are without a player or two at the beginning of the season due to the MISL playoffs. I've heard (but can't be sure) that the MISL pay scale is similar to USL2 per season - salaries ranging from about $3000 at the low end to $15000 at the high end per season, with most players earning $5000-6000. (A few MISL players may actually have been paid well above that level by sponsors; as recently as 1999 it was claimed that Hector Marinaro was the highest-paid soccer player in the United States. I don't know anything about how true that claim is. Almost certainly no longer occurs to that ridiculous extent, especially now that the MISL has gone single-entity.)
I've read the book "Unlucky" it's a good read. But like Lisa mentioned the Royals have never been in the PDL.