Writers don’t get paid much. Well, duh! We then get two tales of sorrow about how tough it is being a mid-list writer and there is a point to be made here. Publishers will put effort into a debut novel or push a household name and lots of writers see their work languishing for the sake of a marketing budget. It’s tough out there. My royalties this last quarter certainly weren’t enough to make me give up my day job. And there’s the thing, most writers cannot exist on writing alone. It’s the way of things and I believe that most of us are aware of this. Very few make the bestsellers list and earn in the millions.
But, this being the Guardian:
This week, the All-Party Parliamentary Writers Group called on the UK government to take immediate action to reverse the steep decline in author incomes, a year after its inquiry found that writers’ earnings have fallen by 42% in real terms since 2005.
And what, precisely, is the government supposed to do about it? Bearing in mind that this is absolutely no business of government in the first place. None whatsoever.
The tough conditions could discourage new writers, “exacerbating the lack of diversity in publishing and the creative industries”, the APPWG report warned – a concern echoed by Hudson and the RSL’s survey, which found that of 2,000-odd writers, 25% identified as working class, but only made up 11% of the highest earners.
Really? Ask literary agents and publishers how big their slush piles are. And look at how successful Leg Iron Books has been with its small enterprise. Leggy hasn’t exactly struggled to get his portfolio of authors and publications together, has he? And I don’t give a flying one about diversity. If someone can write and they have a story to tell, there are ways of getting to the market and bypassing the gatekeepers. But you won’t get rich. Background is irrelevant.
None of us is making much. We are driven by enthusiasm and the desire to tell stories. The money – what little there is of it – is a nice little bonus when it happens. Yes, making the big time would be nice, but not doing so doesn’t discourage me or those like me. We will still do it regardless. It’s just that we are worldly-wise enough to realise that this isn’t going to be a career option and for the vast majority of authors out there, don’t give up the day job is sound advice.
“It excludes so many people on the other end of the spectrum,” says Hudson. “We’ll miss all those stories if we only have books by people who either have the freedom to devote all their time and attention to that, or who have other sources of income. All the people who need to pay the rent and the bills, they’re the ones who will miss out. It will make our literary culture so much poorer because we will have such a narrow spectrum of stories.”
Bollocks.
These people have a completely different worldview from those of us who live in reality land. They think that the rest of us, doing a job that we don’t particularly enjoy in order to pay our bills, owe it to them to allow them to do something creative that they enjoy without having to worry about such things. It would be nice if they offered to get a real job and pay me to do triathlons.
Being a writer has always been a tough gig, financially speaking. It’s got tougher since the dawn of the Internet, too many people wanting something for nothing is part of the problem. The other part is that the writing ‘profession’ like acting, has always had more people wanting to do it than actual real paying jobs.
Quite. It’s not exactly a secret. Making a living from it is for the few.