Wednesday 9 July 2014

Killing our darlings

This post was going to be a report from yesterday's important debate at the House of Commons, hosted by ALCS, on how authors can be fairly rewarded for their work. But my train was cancelled in the middle of nowhere and so I didn't actually get to the debate. Well done, railways.

The subject of the debate was outlined in an article in yesterday's Guardian: Authors' incomes collapse to 'abject' levels. There are several things wrong with the article, not least its concentration entirely on literary fiction as though that represents all, or even most, books. Most books are non-fiction. Most novels are not literary. But never mind. The survey behind the article actually asked writers of all types of books, even if the Guardian didn't. If you want to read the non-journalised account of the research, it's on the ALCS website.

The Poor Poet, Carl Spitzweg, 1839
The gist of it is that writers are a lot poorer than they used to be. As most people seem to think writers earn a lot ("look at JK Rowling") they don't imagine that matters. But they don't and it does. The median income of professional writers, the survey found, is £11,000. That's less in actual numbers, not just in real terms, than 2005 when it was £12,330. If the 2005 figure is adusted to 2014 prices, the drop is from £15,450 to £11,000: a drop of nearly a third in ten years, from poor to poorer. (I checked my own figures - down 25% over the same period.) Few people realise that most of the books their children read in school were written by someone paid between £1,000 and £2,000 for the book and sometimes less (that's before expenses, never mind tax). How long do you think they could afford to spend working on it? The amount I get for a book now is roughly half the amount I would get for a directly comparable book in 2000 (not adjusted for inflation - just bare numbers). Would *you* do your job for less than half the pay you had a decade and a half ago? That's why many writers are giving up writing full time.

The survey gives results for professional writers, which it defines as those who spend most of their earning time writing. That's a useful distinction because if the figures were distorted by people who wrote one book five years ago, it wouldn't be very helpful. But it also points out that the proportion of professional writers who can earn a living from writing alone has fallen from 40% to just 11.5% - most of us have to take on another job, or other freelance work. It wasn't clear whether 'income' meant 'turnover' or earnings after expenses have been subtracted (but before tax has been subtracted). To compare with people in employment, it should be the latter. Most people don't have to pay from their own pocket for the electricity they use in the office, the computer and software they use, and their office phone bill. If it's turnover, the situation is even worse as the cost of the items we have to pay for to do the job has gone up as our income as gone down, so they represent a greater proportion of turnover. - there's less left after paying for them.

There is little general sympathy for writers because we do a job we like and other people believe they would like to do. (It's odd that the same doesn't apply to other people who like their jobs, such as surgeons and landscape gardeners.) Those unsympathetic people probably imagine sitting at a desk in Tuscany for an hour or two each day 'penning' great stories when inspiration strikes. Yeah, right. Dream on. I work a standard 35-40 hour week and none of it is in Tuscany.


I'm principally a children's writer and this blog is about children's writing, so I'll focus on that. It's not a matter of simple market forces. We are not makers of slide rules crying because the world has moved on to calculators. Nor are we writing books people don't want to buy. That sometimes happens - it's an occupational hazard. We spend a long time developing a book and a publisher doesn't want it. Fine - if I've written an unsaleable book, I don't expect to be paid for it. The crux of the matter is that we write books that publishers do want, that do sell, and we are the only link in the chain that doesn't earn enough to live on. Printers and in-house editors haven't seen their income drop. The ALCS report found that professional writers earn only two-thirds of the amount considered to be a living wage. We can't live on the money we earn from the books we write. That average figure is less than a 19-year-old friend of mine earns working in a DIY shop - and his income will go up as he gains experience, not down.

Why should you care? Because if authors can't afford to live on their writing, they won't write as much. Yes, someone will still write fantasy series or some other type of fiction they feel like writing (probably not a writer with years of editorial input building his or her skills, though). But who will write the reading scheme stories, the reluctant-reader novels, the remedial maths texts, the books about space, dinosaurs, tractors, One Direction (God forbid we should lose those)? No one ever dreamed of sitting at a desk in Tuscany writing a comparison of fourteen types of digger, but that is exactly what might fire the imagination and love of reading of a five-year-old. If we kill off professional children's writers, our children and grandchildren will be the collateral damage. It's true - You don't know what you've got until it's gone.

Anne Rooney
aka Stroppy Author
Latest books: Off the Rails and Soldier Boy (reissues), Ransom, June 2014
Go Figure: A Maths Journey (4 titles), Wayland, June 2014
Mega Machine Record Breakers, Carlton, May 2014 (does not include a comparison of 14 different types of digger)



20 comments:

Sue Purkiss said...

Well said, Anne!

catdownunder said...

Very well said. Someone actually said to me today, "Anyone can write a book and get it published now - you know all the e-publishing stuff. It's easy." When I pointed out that writers rarely (if ever) earn much he just shrugged and said, "Like I said anyone can write. You can't expect to be paid for it."
I did not bother to pursue the discussion - nothing will change his mind.

Heather Dyer said...

Blimey catdownunder, that man clearly doesn't read.

Nick Green said...

I fear that the days of the full-time writer may be numbered. It will increasingly become an activity people do in their 'spare time'. (Though some of us spare-timers aren't too bad, y'know...)

Re. Catdownunder's comment: Wow. Saying everyone can write is like saying everyone can cook. Yes, most people can make beans on toast...

catdownunder said...

I sometimes wonder whether the man in question can read - he seems to spend most of his library time looking at car sites on the internet! I have never seen him borrow a book.

Stroppy Author said...

Nick, I am not saying spare-time writers can't write well. I'm saying they will write the books they want to write, and the overlap between those and the books that children need will be small. Non-fiction in particular will suffer. Much as I enjoy writing books about science for 8-year-olds, it's not something I would do if I wasn't paid for it and I don't know anyone who would.

Catdownunder, that is such a common and sad state of affairs. Perhaps it's because we use the same word for the functional writing of making a shopping list and the creative writing of producing a book. It's rather like saying you can paint because you can spatter Dulux onto a wall.

Susan Price said...

Hooray, Anne! So well said. I am tweeting this as widely as I can and have posted it on Authors Electric Facebook page.

Anyone who thinks 'anyone can write' should spend time as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow in universities. I met so many bright, articulate people who couldn't write a good plain sentence that made sense, let alone be beautiful.

Lucy Coats said...

Thank you from me too, Anne. I wish the Mumsnet bloggers who complain that we charge for school visits (because, among other gripes, we earn so much from selling books afterwards!) would read this. then they might understand why we have to. Off to tweet it as well.

Emma Barnes said...

Thanks, Anne, for such an intelligent analysis of the situation. It seems a wider problem for all the "creative" professions - and it's going to end up that only those people who can afford to it, will write. That means a very narrow range of people doing the writing - and as you say, that some subjects just won't get covered.

Dianne Hofmeyr said...

This post has come just at the right time. I've recently done my Income and Outgoings for the Tax Year and its sickening. You know in your head that its like this, but seeing it cold-bloodedly on paper, really shocks. I can only afford to write because my husband supports me.

Brilliantly put Anne, and as you say who else is receiving half of what they received 5 years ago and working seemingly twice as hard? Is it time to turn publishers down when they come up with ever decreasing advances, citing all sorts of expenses etc? Or will that backfire and make us poorer?

John Dougherty said...

Great post, Anne. I did make the House of Commons event and found it fascinating and worrying in equal measure.

Also dispiriting is the Daily Telegraph's reporting, focusing on a single comment made by Joanne Harris and misrepresenting it so that she appears to be attacking JK Rowling rather than making a trenchant comment about the way writers are portrayed in the media.

Nicola Morgan said...

Yes, to all.

And yes, i saw the ridic misquoting of Joanne H and then misquoting of the misquoting and how she then had to battle her way through piles of denseness on Twitter.

So frustrating when there's a proper debate to be had about how we pay for the arts, and some people jump on a piece of garbled trivia.

Sue Bursztynski said...

Well, I've never been able to make a living out of my writing, even in the days when I was able to get commissioned to do education titles like the ones you describe, Anne. I'd be glad of some of those but education publishers where I live have in recent years only been using stables of writers. I used to write non fiction but trade publishers here aren't buying that either. The only person I know who is writing full time is married, so his wife supported him while he built up his career, mostly writing education books, which are very good for bread and butter work. He admits he could never have done it if he hadn't had someone to support him. He doesn't even have to look after the kids alone because his wife also works from home! ;-)

The impression I get from reading SCBWI magazines and blog posts is that I'm the only writer working full time at a day job. Seems that wasn't right, eh?

Stroppy Author said...

That's far from right, Sue. SCBWI is not very representative of published writers. For one thing, a lot of writers who are trying to live from their writing can't afford to join SCBWI. For another, as you say, a lot of writers write non-fiction which is not a SCBWI area of interest.

It would be interesting to know how many of the 11.5% are the sole earner in their household.

C.J.Busby said...

Great post, and you're absolutely right that what will suffer (is suffering?) is the non-fiction and early readers, because they take skill and experience to do well, and it matters that they are done well. You're also right about the way writers are somehow expected to o it for nothing because they love it, while no one would say that about being a teacher or doctor, however much they love their work. I wonder if part of the problem is the tendency for some writers to represent what they do as simply part of who they are - I *have* to write, I wouldn't be happy if I wasn't writing, it's in my soul to write, whether it's published or not. It's a brave author who says, I write because I'm paid and if I wasn't paid I wouldn't do it.

The question is, what do you do about it? One author refusing their measly advance is not going to do anything. Maybe instead of the Society of Authors, we need a Writers Union. Then we could start thinking abut collective action. Equity have had some success with campaigning for actors, who have a very similar problem to writers, i.e., that some are paid such gargantuan sums that no one has much sympathy or understanding of the situation of the vast majority of actors who do the bread and butter roles for less than the living wage.

Cecilia

Stroppy Author said...

That's a very good point, Cecilia, that writers do themselves no favours by presenting writing as a vocation. I don't think we need something instead of the SocA, though, we just need to use it better. Nicola Solomon has done masses to get writers taken more seriously. She is good at lobbying, she has increased SocA profile within government and amongst publishers. But the Society needs the support and involvement of writers and it seems hard to get that. Of course, trying to make writers do anything is like herding cats. But we should feel strongly enough about this to help SocA fight our corner.

C.J.Busby said...

Well, you may be right about Society of Authors - they did after all do this survey and publicise it - and inspired by that, next time I get an actual royalty cheque I will try to close my eyes and bite my lip and hand over £100 of it to join...

catdownunder said...

Now, now Anne - you know we cats are a very independent lot! :)

Sue Bursztynski said...

The Australian Society of Authors has actually been quite useful. For example, they did the negotiations with politicians that got us Education Lending Right and kept Public Lending Right going when a new government was planning to scrap it. But no, they're not a union - and a writers' strike here such as those in the US and UK wouldn't be much use, because publishers would just get books from overseas. :-(

As a teacher, I have to say that, whie we're not excited to do it for nothing, we are expected to treat it as a vocation and every time there are negotiations for a pay rise the response is, "But they're teachers, why aren't they doing this for the love of it?"

And then they wonder why there s so litte demand fr teacher studies.

Katherine Roberts said...

Timely post, Anne!