Free Stuff – Creator choice or user expectation? By Dawn Finch

Copyright Gecko&Fly

As we move into the next phases of managing the pandemic, we can now take the opportunity to lick our wounds. It seems to be within the nature of children’s writers and illustrators to want to make the world a better place and I wasn’t surprised to see so many of you offering up your time and materials for free. I know that this made lockdown a lot easier for many parents and there’s even a chance you might have had a few sales from this.

But the grants for self-employed people are drying up, and so are the opportunities. It’s looking increasingly likely that schools will have neither money or time to book many digital visits and events for the next year or so, and this means that author’s already fragile incomes are about to take the worst hit of all. It’s time to think very hard about whether or not you want to leave all that free stuff out there.

You are going to hear me talk about this a lot over the coming year. As chair of the Society of Authors’ Children’s Writers and Illustrators committee, I know that this situation is going to require some very specific support. This has been something that the committee has been talking about right from the start. We know that there are concerns that are bigger than just the technical matters of a digital visit.

CWIG are working on a way of giving you advice for this, but when you are making and booking your digital visits, please don’t be afraid to be very specific about how that video you are making will be used, and what you are giving permission for. Have you given them a video that they are free to roll out to every school in the Academy chain? Have you given them permissions you are allowed to give? Have you given them rights to repeat-show that video in perpetuity? We work with words, but why are we so bad at getting things in writing? Why do we just assume we can trust people to respect our permissions if we don’t respect them ourselves?

These might seem like a thing that doesn’t really matter, but why would School B book (and pay for) a digital visit if they can just get a copy of your video for free from School A? If you talk about all of your books and do a generic-age workshop, your video won’t age for a few years so why would anyone pay you to come back when your next book comes out? How much are they going to pay you for different versions of your video? Live stream with chat and interaction is one thing, specially recorded video is another? Get it in writing! Don’t be afraid to pin down your conditions.

I meet and work with hundreds of authors and my main grumble with you all is that you’re too damn nice! It is absolutely essential that you feel empowered to ask for payment and conditions because you are entitled to it. It is also extremely important that you do not feel pressurised into giving your work away for free. Yes, I’ve said this before and it certainly won’t be the last time I talk about it.
CWIG are also examining creative income streams and looking at how we can support authors to find ways to pay the bills, and to carry on writing and illustrating and generally making the world a better place. We’d love to hear your creative methods of earning money related to your writing and illustrating. Drop me a line in these replies, or head over to twitter and send me a message.

I’m also hoping that we can encourage those authors who already have super-massive platforms to stop and think before they give so much stuff away for free. There is absolutely nothing wrong with giving your work and time away for free if you feel if will amplify your work and your career, but it should always be done because you choose to and not because of end-user expectation. I am hoping that some of the biggest names in children’s publishing will give up #EveryTenthTweet to amplify the work of some of the smallest. Imagine if those huge names started sharing work by lesser-known authors, and linking to their outlets. I know the power that they hold and that endorsement could relate to genuine sales. I’m not just talking about newbies and new books, I’m talking about bringing light to all authors currently languishing in the shadows. It’s time for the biggest names to take a step sideways and let the light flood in.

The future is certainly going to be a challenge for authors in every field, but as children’s authors used to be able to look to school visits and events as a significant part of their income, there are going to be particularly tough times ahead. This means we need to really pull this family together and support each other even more. Let’s amplify each other, support each other’s work, and most of all let’s all make sure that people remember to #PayCreators

Dawn Finch is a children’s author and librarian and the current chair of the Society of Authors’ Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group committee (CWIG)
@dawnafinch