Authors Getting Paid Less

Toby Frost

Toby Frost

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I think the arrival of the Harry Potter marketing machine destroyed the modestly balanced literary meritocracy that preceded it like the sack of Rome.
It's distorting effect on both the direction of publishing, and the delusional aspiration of teenage 'would be' writers, was as devastating as it was hopeless.
Writing career paths changed modes subtly, from a creative investment of modest deals, to an all or nothing lottery.

Fortunately I come from the art world and started writing because I loved getting ideas out and creating. I write for the love of the process rather than to make a buck.

I notice that the four figure average writers income roughly matches the UK pension. At least you will be familiar with the lifestyle when you retire. :)
 
I found the more interesting statement in the article was, "the number of authors who earn all their income from writing more than [halved] since 2006, from 40% to 19%." I am somewhat confused, though, about the statement initially talking about the number of authors, but supporting that with a percentage of authors; the first part could be a concern, the latter part may merely reflect a growth in the population of self-reported authors.

I also do not see the any support for the opening assertion, "A steep slump in average earnings ... impoverishes literature by dictating which stories get told." My subjective impression is that the opportunities to have a story 'published' to the world have grown drastically while the costs of doing so has dropped. I'm not sure that a decline in average (median) earnings necessarily implies fewer earning opportunities and discounts the value of unpaid opportunities to present stories to wide audiences.

The author of this particular article may or may not have a valid point. I am a little unsure as to the point that the author wishes to make and do not feel that there is enough supporting evidence presented to make any conclusions.
 
>A steep slump in average earnings ... impoverishes literature by dictating which stories get told.
Yeah, this is old enough to be a canard. You can read about it when paperbacks came along. I have a curious collection of comments by SF authors dating to around 1959-1961 lamenting much the same thing--a decline in pennies per word translating (for some) into a demand for only certain types of stories. The lament is always that the demand is for literature inferior to what the complainers would otherwise be writing.

I file this under the same heading as other decline laments: oh the state of education today, oh the decline in morals, oh the oh never mind.
 
The only difference these days is that more people are writing and hoping they will be in the right place at the right time - with the right piece of writing - when opportunity comes knocking. The simple truth is that if your ambition is to make a living writing fiction, all but a few need a Plan B. (And I suspect most of them had one)
 
My ambition is to make a living writing fiction. I always see these types of articles but it doesn't discourage me. There's more professional authors today than there ever has been. If I put in the work, and become the best writer I can be, I see no reason why I can't join their ranks.
 
Astro Pen said:
I think the arrival of the Harry Potter marketing machine destroyed the modestly balanced literary meritocracy that preceded it like the sack of Rome.
It's distorting effect on both the direction of publishing, and the delusional aspiration of teenage 'would be' writers, was as devastating as it was hopeless.
Writing career paths changed modes subtly, from a creative investment of modest deals, to an all or nothing lottery.
Click to expand...

That idea of "all or nothing" is pretty poisonous, and may have accelerated the decline of the mid-list. Publishers seem to be chasing the idea of finding the next blockbuster, without quite knowing what that next blockbuster might be. The idea that you could be a fairly successful SFF writer, respected in the genre but unknown outside it, putting out a couple of books per year and living (mainly) off that, is gone. I think the overall devaluation of creative activity in the internet era, the idea that if you're enjoying it, you should be doing it for free, hasn't helped either.
 
Toby Frost said:
I think the overall devaluation of creative activity in the internet era, the idea that if you're enjoying it, you should be doing it for free, hasn't helped either.
Click to expand...
Do you think that there are now more people who are willing to sign deals for less money and so agents/publishers pay less money, or that there are magazines that won't pay and still get enough contributions and that this is leading to a vicious cycle?
 
msstice said:
Do you think that there are now more people who are willing to sign deals for less money and so agents/publishers pay less money, or that there are magazines that won't pay and still get enough contributions and that this is leading to a vicious cycle?
Click to expand...
This is my gripe with the original article. It never says or gives any numbers that show that the people getting paid are getting paid less (I suspect per word rates have gone up). It also doesn't say that fewer people are being paid substantial amounts. I wonder if the averages have been changed because there is a far larger population of people defining themselves as authors. With the growth of self-publishing, I wonder if this shift doesn't simply represent far more people at the low end of the curve.
 
Here's a personal anecdote that might provide a perspective on making a living and just living.

I have a PhD in early modern European history. While still in college (eleven years of it), I had plenty of people ask me what I thought I'd do with such a degree. It took me a while to get beyond the stock "teach at a university" answer and get to something that felt closer to the truth.

The truth was, I didn't care. Yes, I did try to teach and eventually fell sideways into a rather shallow pool, but it was never the point. At least, not from about my first year in grad school. The point was the degree. The point was the learning I would do. The point was I was hungry to learn more about late medieval Europe and thought I could make a contribution (however obscure) to the scholarly dialog. I would be happy to get a job in the field, but the accomplishment--the point--was to become a scholar in the field.

I did that. Everything else was gravy and happenstance.

I bring the same attitude to writing. I write because the book is the point. I do my best to sell those books because it cheers me to have readers. It's tough to perform to an empty house. But the money isn't the point. Even the readers aren't the point. The point is the story. Everything else is gravy (not quite happenstance, with books, but that gets us into marketing).

This approach feels right to me because it means every completed book is a success in its own right. Whether it sells or not has more to do with marketing than with writing. Marketing is like a whole other career. There came a point when I had to decide whether I wanted to take that career on as well. My answer was no (I treat it more like a hobby or a supplement). If you really do want to make a living at writing, you really are taking on two careers, two full-time jobs.

None of that is meant to discourage (or encourage!) anyone. I offer it only as a perspective.
 
Fair enough, and I agree, but I would say two things in response: firstly that it ought to be possible for someone to make a reasonable living (neither a fortune nor a pittance) writing good quality popular fiction (definitions of which will vary), and secondly, that one of the appealing things about being traditionally published is that the publisher will do (most) of the marketing for you. Of course, if people don't want to do that, they're welcome, but the option ought to be there. Good books shouldn't disappear because their authors don't know how to shout loudly (not that anyone's saying that they should).

To be blunt, I see quite a few comments on this site that boil down to "all new things are bad, all old things are good", but this feels like an exception. I suspect that the industry was in a much healthier place in the 80s and 90s.
 
msstice said:
Do you think that there are now more people who are willing to sign deals for less money and so agents/publishers pay less money, or that there are magazines that won't pay and still get enough contributions and that this is leading to a vicious cycle?
Click to expand...

I honestly don't know enough to be able to answer this. Sorry about the double post.
 
>it ought to be possible for someone to make a reasonable living
I'm curious as to why this ought to be possible. To me, it's a bit like saying it ought to be possible for someone to make a reasonable living by inventing things. Or by starting a business. "Ought" doesn't enter into it.

Per an earlier post, I'm with you that the old things/new things mantra is nonsense. Authors have been complaining about making a living for a very long time. And of course there have been authors for many centuries before any of them making a living. The very notion was laughable. First you had money and *then* you wrote.
 
I hate this sort of study, because it starts off with the presumption that fiction writing is like brick laying. But it is not a wage profession that rewards industry and talent with hourly compensation.

To get paid for being a fiction writer you have to have enough innate talent with language, the drive to work on something that you may never be paid for, an idea that is unusual enough to warrant attention, the good fortune/connections to make it to publishing and then some sort of marketing/press that causes the public to seek that out.

So this article reads for me like "Number of people working as billionaire industrialists declining" or "Discouragine statistics for those vying for Time's Sexiest Man Alive title".

Doing well publishing fiction books is passing through the eye of the needle. Harry Potter didn't steal your chances as much as authors failed to write something nearly as mesmerizing to the public that would pull readers away from what they love.
 
Toby Frost said:
To be blunt, I see quite a few comments on this site that boil down to "all new things are bad, all old things are good", but this feels like an exception. I suspect that the industry was in a much healthier place in the 80s and 90s.
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In the 80s and 90s it was much harder to write & query in a physical sense; typing multiple versions, photocopying, posting queries and manuscripts by snail mail. Not to mention the expense and the time sitting in a library trying to find details of publishers and agents around the world from phone books and details in books. And the time waiting and hoping for a return letter.

You had to be pretty keen and patient to embark on a quest to be published, but I did feel that by writing - even though I didn't know any writers and was completely unsuccessful - I was part of a small, but special group of people who submitted themselves to this madness.

Many of those things have been eliminated by the internet, which is a very good thing, but the number of people writing has increased incredibly while the number of publishers have reduced in real terms, and writing help and information and email queries has taken the pain out of the non-writing aspects of the endeavor.

Even though it's harder these days and I don't know if I'll get another publishing contract, there is no way I want to go back in time to those days!
 
The place where it was at least somewhat easier was back in the golden age of magazines. Today, about the only place to get published is in books. Yes, there are a handful of SF and fantasy magazines, but they have nowhere near the clout they once had. Readers have largely abandoned them. So there's a grand total of one outlet. Worse, it's not just that you have to write a book, in our field you have to write a series. And that's just to get noticed. And even if you get noticed, there's wave after wave of new books who will bury yours.

I say again, writing has always been a fool's quest (have a read of Hemingway's letter to the Maestro some time). But the world is awash in such quests. Most small businesses fail, but lots of people start them, every year. It's crazy to think of turning pro in football or basketball or baseball, yet thousands so dream and their wreckage can be seen everywhere.

One of the valuable things about forums like this one is that we welcome fools. We don't even yell at them when they complain.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
For quite some time now, the Society of Authors has been saying that their research indicates 5% of British authors make their living from their book sales. It's probably less now.
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And is that because authors are being paid less, or because there are more people whose self publishing qualifies them as authors?
 
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