I
was looking through an old blog of mine from about five years ago and
came across this:
"Roughly speaking, until 2000, if you wrote a story, made a film or recorded a song, and people paid to buy it, in the form of a book, a DVD or a CD, you received a measurable reward for your creativity. Customers paid because they were happy to honour your creative copyright."
It's
worth clicking through to read the whole article from Robert McCrum,
which looks at how the credit crunch and the Internet's increasingly
liberal views on copyright have affected writers and the image of the
professional author. Admittedly, only a few writers get to be
full-time nowadays, and the rest have to make do with part-time jobs
and spousal support, so why do so many of us dream of developing our
writing into a career when it is so unlikely?
Which
may be a cynical way of looking at the business, but mathematically
valid. I find myself looking at TV talent shows the same way. Why do
these (sometimes) talented bright young things put themselves through
the X-Factor, The Greatest Dancer, Britain’s Got Talent et al when
the odds of winning are so low? They openly admit and even boast that
the shows start off with thousands of applicants, only some of whom
are invited to auditions, then whittled down to the best of the bunch
and then told to fight it out on screen for a number of weeks until
only one is left. Only one can win, and the odds of it being you are
minimal. It would make more sense to sell everything you own, fly to
Vegas and place everything on black on the roulette wheel. At least
then you get a 49% chance of winning something.
The
same could be said of this writing biz. Why put your novel into a
slush pile in the hope that it will be plucked out, read, liked,
invested in, edited, printed, distributed and sold in the millions?
It happens to very few and my thoughts above of authors rarely being
full time still holds up today.
Strangely,
I found myself as a full time author just a year or so after that
post was written, but only through the auspices of the coalition
government and them laying off a load of librarians in my council. I
was one of them and took the leap into freelance writing. Now I find
myself on the job market again, which is unfortunate but necessary. I
don’t begrudge working a ‘proper’ job to fund my family, but it
comes with some problems. Namely, lots of my referees from 4+ years
ago have moved on and I have no way to find them! Also we had become
quite used in my family to me being at home and being able to go to
school open days, be around to take care of poorly kids, and
generally being flexible when it came to the old work/life balance.
Now my children look at me oddly when I leave the house in a shirt
and tie, instead of bumming around in my pyjamas.
For
me, I find writing a brilliant way to pay the bills, but I think less
and less authors will be able to pay the bills only through writing
in the future. We’ll all have to be entrepreneurial and have a side
hustle going to keep the wolf
from the door. Does it suck? Yeah, it kinda does. Am I surprised? Not
in the least.
4 comments:
Totally sucks. If your books are selling in sufficient quantities you should be able to make a living and it's iniquitous that publishers are paying out massive share dividends while the people who produce their product have to subsidise it with extra work. I'm pleased for you that your got your 4 years, and perhaps when you are no longer supporting kids you will be able to afford to do it again. Who knows that the market will be like in a few years' time? (Probably worse, but we can hope!) BTW my referees would be even harder to track down, being all dead.... so if you have to go back, do it while you still have them! :-)
Yep, it sucks. And I think is a symptom of how much the creative industries are valued. In other words, not at all! It's why I'm training to be a teacher, I just couldn't justify the sporadic earnings anymore. I had to get real and support my family.
I don't disagree with the blog or the comments -- but being a full-time author was always rare. I started my 'career' in 1973, under the rule of another pack of nasty, vicious Tories, Thatcher's mob (though they weren't quite as stupid and incompetent as the present bunch.)
I quickly became a full-time writer for the simple reason that Thatcher was busy closing the Black Country down and I couldn't find a job. I was at least earning some money by writing, so I concentrated on it. The earnings might have been slightly better than now -- a writer's earnings are certainly becoming even more precarious -- but they were still small. The writers I knew back then were, mostly, unable to earn anything like a living wage by writing if they had a family. Almost all were 'supported by a spouse' or had a day-job, full or part-time.
Completely agree that the situation is unfair and getting worse -- but I can't remember any golden age when, except for a lucky few, writers could earn a decent wage by writing alone.
Twenty years ago when I was in the first flush of excitement about getting a book published, my agent asked me if I wanted to be a full-time writer. If I did, she told me, it would probably take about ten years to get to the point where it was viable. She advised me not to give up the day job, not because she didn't think I could become a full-time writer, but because she knew how hard it was. Having a day job doesn't mean you can't write as well, and even though I hesitate to mention it here, it may also provide you with a pension. I'm grateful for that early advice!
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