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| Money |
Yet I am part of an increasingly rare full-time group. From 2022 figures published by the ALCS we know that overall author earnings are in steep decline, and now just 19% of writers are full-time. The average earnings of a fulltime author dropped by 60% in 16 years and is now £7000, under the minimum wage. This report was published in a year when UK publishing houses posted record overall profits. The report makes sorry reading (for more, there's a link to the survey at the bottom of this blog).
I look at the prospects for young people starting out now and, given the cost of living and the cost of a place to live, I think that the idea of being a full-time author is pretty much going extinct. Starting out, I could never make that choice now. It seems you can only afford to spend time writing if you have another main job, a pension from a previous career or a high-earning partner who will support you.
Meanwhile publishers say they want a more diverse writing world, with people from all sectors of life…Well there’s a massive elephant that’s filling the whole of the room here and it’s carrying a sign in its trunk – WRITING DOESN’T PAY ENOUGH FOR THAT TO HAPPEN. The money is not being shared round enough for anybody who is not well-off to consider it a main career option.
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| The elephant that lives in big profitable publishing companies. |
In addition to writing, publishers now expect us to pay for our own book launches and book publicity efforts. For those who aren’t well-off it doesn’t seem possible. School visits might provide a main income for some but most people with young kids or another job simply couldn’t travel round the country, let alone wait for months for appearance payments.
Recently we have had large conglomerate publishers sending round well-meaning diversity surveys to fill in, but no amount of bureaucratic box-ticking is going to help with this.
Publishers need to acknowledge the elephant that stops so many people coming through their doors. It’s money.
Share the profits out more fairly with creatives or writing becomes an exclusive hobby-world for the elite.
Moira Butterfield has written many internationally-sold books for children and has been a full-time writer for over two decades. Her latest publications are The Secret Life of Oceans (Bloomsbury), Look What I Found On the Farm (Nosy Crow) and Does a Monkey Get Grumpy? (Bloomsbury)
Moira Butterfield
moira@moiraworld.co.uk
www.moirabutterfield.co.uk
twitter @moiraworld
instagram @moirabutterfieldauthor
The link to the author earnings survey referenced above:
https://www.alcs.co.uk/news/why-writers-are-at-a-loss-for-words
Well said, Moira!
ReplyDeleteTotally agree.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more. I was born into a working class family, endured a traumatic childhood which affected my education, and ended up in a dead end job. However, I've always loved books, films, theater, etc. I'm now holding down a physically demanding job and writing my novel. My partner earns more which means I can work part time and have time to write. I won't give up until my novel is out there.
ReplyDeleteOver my long writing lifetime, the trend has been relentlessly downwards. My first book advance, in the 80s, was about ten times any advance I might secure now. And of course back then, it bought a lot more day-to-day living. I wrote for radio as well, and although it wasn't well paid by comparison with television, it was well paid enough to add to the portfolio of work every writer does to make ends meet and make it all viable. It is indeed a huge elephant in the publishing room - everyone involved in my industry makes more than the creatives without whom there would be nothing.
ReplyDeleteAll absolutely true, and I massively agree that it matters. Part of the problem is also unrealistic expectations, though. No one ever just suddenly became a full-time writer and made enough to live on straight away. You say yourself you started part-time when your children were small - you already had somewhere to live and a person sharing the bills. Emerging writers often think (especially if they have done a degree in creative writing) that once they have a book deal (one book!) they will have a career and income. I used to occasionally do a one-off talk to CW MA students on the finances of being a writer. They were mostly horrified. I was mostly horrified that no one ever broached the subject with them. Over time, you can build up more income as royalties/PLR/ALCS payments on many books comes to more than royalties/PLR/ALCS on few books.
ReplyDeleteA fairer share of the profits would most certainly help. But most books produce very little profit. Say you publish a picture book that retails at £10 (to make the maths easy). The publisher prints and sells 10,000 copies for £5 a copy after distribution/retailer margin (£5 is a generous estimate). That's £50,000 turnover. Most of that is not profit by any means. It has to cover printing, the salaries of all the staff involved in producing the book, and a share of overheads. If the publisher made 20% profit (as if!) that's £10k from the book for the author, the illustrator, the shareholders, and to invest. Even if it all went to the author and illustrator, that's only £5K each. You still have to write and place around 7 books a year to make a livable turnover (not income). And what if your book was a novel? So you get the illustrator's share as well - but then you still have to write *three* novels a year. If you're not a bestselling author (and most people aren't) you can't start off as a full-time writer and live on the income. Some people try to work around the maths by self-publishing and a few succeed. But you *still* need to be an outlier with lots of talent (in marketing, rather than writing)and luck.
Sorry, that's a gloomy comment. But the problem is more intractable than greedy publishers, sadly. Which you know, of course... :-)
It's true that producing a picture book costs a lot, and publishers have to cover these costs before paying out to authors and illustrators. And it's also true that UK sales alone don't tend to generate much money, especially if the books aren't given a large marketing budget. However, if a book sells foreign rights (particularly to larger territories, like the US) then the publisher stands to make considerably more profit, and this is where authors can lose out, with considerably less of this profit coming to them. I think there's a case for arguing that publishers' profits should be shared more equally among all their authors, not just the big name celebrities.
DeleteRecently some big conglomerates have been sending out 'diversity surveys', but if they want to be serious about that then they must look at payment. It needs to be called out because otherwise they are just making themselves look good superficially.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree - thank you for writing
ReplyDeleteThank you, Moira, for saying what we're all thinking! It really is almost impossible to make a decent living from writing now. Publishers need to share their profits more equitably to sustain ALL their authors (not just the celebrities). And perhaps we should all be lobbying for UBI or Basic Income for Artists, as they are currently trialling in Ireland.
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