The 'level playing field has lumps in

Recently I was involved in a discussion about a relatively new publisher that was inviting writers to submit their children's books for consideration. It's said to be a respectable, small publisher—I hadn't heard of it before, so can't give an opinion on that. But it was asking people to buy a book before their own work would be considered for publication. That's not really how conventional publishing works, so it's worth thinking about.

Generally, people submit their work to the publisher and don't pay anything to do this (not even disguised as a book purchase) and the publisher decides whether it wants to publish it or not. If it does, the publisher pays all costs of production including editing, design, layout, illustration (if there are illustrations), printing, distribution and so on. The author pays nothing. Repeat: NOTHING. The author is a provider: the author provides the text for which the publisher is going to have to pay. Usually, the publisher pays an advance, anything from a few hundred to a few thousand pounds depending on the book, the author and the publisher. And later, if the book earns enough money through sales, the author might get more money in the form of royalties. Some books are sold for a flat fee: the publisher pays the author a fixed sum and that's the end of it. You see the flow of money here? From book-buying customers to publisher, from publisher to author. Never, ever, ever from author to publisher. Do you think farmers pay Sainsbury's to take their apples? No.

Many small publishers can't afford to pay an advance. The author gets nothing until copies of the book have been sold and enough time has passed that the publisher can't delay payment any longer (cynical, moi?) and then, with no advance to earn out, the author should be getting some payments immediately. ('Immediately' being a good deal more than a year since the writing of the book was done.) I have written for some small independent publishers that use this model and I will do again because I support the publishers. Sometimes it turns out badly and the publisher doesn't pay because they can't — the need to pay the electricity bill or the printers is always more compelling than the need to pay the writer. What can we do? We can refuse to write another book for them, but that doesn't affect their day-to-day trading like no electricity or no printing does. For one book written for a no-advance publisher I have made the princely sum of £2.11. Not because the book didn't sell but because I've never had royalties beyond the first few weeks. (Royalties are calculated half-yearly. If your book is published a week or two before the end of an accounting period, your first statement is for a few days' sales.) Writing for a no-advance deal is always a risk. Paying (by buying a book) for the outside chance to write with a no-advance deal is a step too far, in my view.

But... Lots of people want to be (traditionally) published writers. Lots of people will go for a deal like this and they have every right to. Among the arguments people made in favour of this publisher and its offer (using the term loosely) was that people are writing because they want to and not to make money so they don't care about the deal. I find this troubling, though I'm willing to listen to counter-arguments. If you are writing for fun, you have another source of income. Suppose your book sells well and the publisher actually pays the royalties. Do you still want to write for fun? Might you one day like to be a professional? How does your later demand—need—for a decent contract sit with your earlier stance? Are we treating these no-advance publishers as a kind of training ground? This is fine for your starter book, perhaps, but you'll need a publisher with a more commercial model if you want to live by this business. And you won't be that sought-after thing, a promising debut, if you've sold your first book for a song. Or given it away. I'm not saying don't do it, but think about it carefully. Will you ever want to make the transition to professional writer? (A professional writer is someone who makes their money by writing—the label is not a reflection of the quality of anyone's writing.)

There are dangers with this starter-publisher model, though. The more prevalent and widely accepted no-advance deals become, the narrower the band of people who can afford to be writers. If you went to work tomorrow, but weren't paid until two years later, life wouldn't be easy. I'm not dividing this along conventional diversity lines because it's actually just an economic division. If you don't have another source of income (job, partner, inheritance) , you can't afford to persevere with your writing at a sufficiently intense and dedicated level to improve and succeed in a realistic time frame. Publishers won't wait forever for book 2. This is not about the people still learning their craft, but about people who have got there and are producing publishable work. If you have to look after your kids and earn money, there's not going to be much spare time for writing.

The point of the advance system is to give people money to live on while writing their book (though advances are so low these days it's not really possible). Without it, people who are poorer will be under-represented, their voices won't be heard and—more importantly—the readers who would want to listen to those voices will be denied the chance to hear them. Because books are for readers. Our desire to be heard as writers is just the same selfish 'notice me' impulse that everyone has; we don't have a right to be heard. What is important is that readers get to hear the voices they want to hear, voices that resonate for them. That can be BAME voices, the voices of disabled writers, LGBT+ writers—but also the voices of the urban poor of whatever colour, rural voices, the voices of single parents, and so on. It is not disadvantaged writers who should be at the forefront of our concern but disadvantaged readers as there are for more of those. But that concern translates into making it possible for impoverished writers to earn money from their work if people want to read it.

So when a publisher invites writers from all backgrounds to submit their work for consideration, that's a good thing. But it would be a far, far better thing if those writers could actually be enabled to do it by a fair deal (and certainly NOT by having to pay for the privilege).

I have not named the publisher in this post and I would ask that the publisher is not named in comments. The buy-a-book-no-advance deal was a jumping-off point for considering a wider issue in the publishing industry. I don't have an answer to this problem, but that's not a reason to avoid talking about it. We need new, young publishing companies and inevitably they don't have much money. Maybe the royalty rate should be higher to compensate for no advance?After all, they only have to pay the royalties when they have got some money in from the books. Maybe people have better suggestions.

Anne Rooney

Shortlisted for Royal Society Young People's Book Award 2018
Winner Judge's Award, School Library Association Information Book Award, 7-12, 2018

Something to fall back on? by Sophia Bennett

Early last week, after a 3-day, intensive, exhaustive training session, I was having a bath and listening to a programme on Radio 4. This is my safe space. The room at the top of the house, from which I can just see the Shard in the far distance, all the way across London, through the bare branches of the ash trees opposite. The room where the ideas come. Though that day I was too tired and I just wanted to listen.

The programme happened to be Short Cuts, hosted by Josie Long, and an episode called Me and You. It featured an essay by a US blogger called Stacia Brown - a letter to her daughter about the trials and tribulations, the pressures, the truth of being a mother, a provider and a writer, and how sometimes (often) being a provider and a writer can be two quite opposing things, and the tension between them almost too much to bear.

If you write, can you afford to provide, and yet, can you afford not to write?

stacialbrown.com

It was so honest, in a way writers can rarely be outside their close groups of friends. We really do have the best job in the world. It's what we've always wanted. When something works, we want to shout it from the rooftops (Twitter, mostly), and we do. We are so upbeat and shiny, and some of the time it's real. I bet Michelle Obama is enjoying her new life as a writer a million times more than her old stressful one as First Lady - but it helps of course that Michelle is currently selling 9 copies a second, and not many of us get to do that. (I've listened to Becoming as it was serialised on Radio 4 too, by the way, and was so frustrated there were only 5 episodes. It's told with such compelling verve and craftsmanship.)

Anyway, Stacia Brown is not a First Lady. She is the kind of person Michelle would understand very well: a hard-working, black single mother, getting by as best she can. In a series of essays run as a podcast called Hope Chest, she writes to her daughter tenderly, but laying bare the truth about the hard life she's chosen. If you're a writer, and life is not a bed of roses for you, you might want to check her out.

Stacialbrown.com

The training session I'd come from was one on teaching writing skills for academics. I teach more than I write at the moment, because the teaching pays reliably and the writing doesn't, and it's hard to turn down an opportunity to do it. Also, I really enjoy it. I love the instant feedback the students give, the clear improvement in their writing, the pleasure of their supervisors (among the students at uni) when they see that difference too. I love reading the stories - academic and creative. I learn so much from them too. If I didn't love writing my own stories with a passion that will never leave me, I could do it all day.

The teaching makes the writing possible (it's part time and it saves me from getting a 'real' job) and impossible (it soaks up that time and brain space anyway). Am I a writer or a provider? I know what Stacia means, I really do, though I'm doing it in South London and not dealing with half the issues and prejudices she encounters, and nor am I - but is it such a bad idea? - making a podcast about it.

There's been a flurry of debate about the findings by the Institute of Fiscal Studies that male graduates from creative arts courses actually make less money than their non-graduate peers by the age of 29. While in general 29 year-old graduates are making 25% more than non-grad peers, and 29 year-old women are making 50% more.

Some (very successful) writer friends have pointed out the value of British creative industries to the economy, which topped £100 billion last year, and enthusiastically proclaimed that we need lots of people to do these jobs (we are the home of Shakespeare, Austen, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney and Harry Potter after all), and students must still aspire to do what they love.

Which sounds great. And we do indeed need a lot of trained people for those fantastic, super-valuable, much-underestimated industries. But we should also be honest that we have more people than we need, and that for everyone who gets a decent living wage doing what they love in the arts there are increasing numbers who've paid £30,000 for a degree who will earn less than the living wage, and probably make that by delivering pizza?

I met a girl over the weekend who helped out on our training course and who's studying to be an optometrist. She wants to be a stand-up comedian and/or a social entrepreneur. She's feeling a little jaded about her course but I told her she's absolutely doing the right thing.

'Something to fall back on' - that annoying phrase the parents and teachers of budding writers and actors used to use. Do they still say it? Should they? Should we encourage all our bright-eyed youngsters to reach for the stars, as we did, and hope for the best? Should we be brave like Stacia Brown and admit that sometimes artists can't see a way to climb out of the gutter? Should we be more honest with the world in general about the non-shiny bits, and what most of us do in addition to our writing, now that our incomes have halved? (In a growing industry. How did that happen? And yet it did.)

There are times when a book sells to two - or twenty - countries, and royalties do actually pour in. Sometimes that TV option you sold turns into something and your story wins a BAFTA. (Yes, Jo Nadin, I'm talking about you.) But not always.

I've spent this morning doing reading and admin for 3 of my current (impermanent) teaching jobs, and building a (paid) event I want to do for schools around my next book. But not writing. Now this blog is done, I'll spend the hour I have left before the kids come home trying to write a few hundred words of the next story. An hour, I hope, of being bright and shiny, and reaching for the stars.

Who'd be a writer? Er, me.

Just like any job, being a professional author has its ups and downs, and if you are serious about pursuing a career in writing I think you should do so with your eyes wide open to what these might be. With this in mind, I've put together a potted little guide to try and help anyone contemplating setting out on this mad, bad and sometimes dangerous journey. This blog entry comes with a warning to those of you dead set on choosing this path: hold on to your Mont Blancs, some of this might not be very palatable.

Let’s start with the good stuff:

THE PROS

• You are your own boss, and despite deadlines you can work hours to suit you.
• You get to meet lots of wonderful people who share your love of reading and writing, and many of these like, if not love, what you choose to do.
• You are doing something you love to do, and your job allows you to express yourself in a way very few others can.
• You entertain and/or enlighten those people who read your work, and you get to hear back from these same people in the form of letters or emails or face-to-face meetings at events.
• If you are very lucky and you hit upon ‘the next big thing’, you could earn a considerable amount of money.

And now the not so good stuff:

THE CONS

• You work alone, day in and day out. (This might be seen as a pro point for some.)
• It’s all down to you. You have no backstop, no safety net. If you can’t get the book written or if the ideas refuse to come, the buck stops with you and you alone.

• You need a strong sense of self-discipline. The hardest thing about working alone (more often than not in your house) is that there are a billion things to distract you from doing what you should be doing on a daily basis: writing.
• Once you have written the book and turned it over to the publisher, you have very little control over what happens next. The publishing industry works in a way and at a pace that can be difficult to come to terms with, and this inevitably leads to frustration and concern. Here’s a small list of the kind of thing you can encounter -

o    You may not have final say over the cover, title or layout of your work.

o    You may not be the lead title for your publisher (you may not even be close to being the lead title), and rue the fact that other works appear to be getting a much higher publicity and marketing spend than yours.

o    You’ll be asked to make changes to your flawless masterpiece (I've always found the editing process useful and constructive, others do not).

o    You’ll be writing to strict deadlines (and you have to deliver).

o    The means by which (and the amount) you are paid is sporadic and extremely difficult to predict.

• Unless you DO turn out to be ‘the next big thing’ (or you are extremely prolific) it’s unlikely you will earn a wage you believe is commensurate with the effort you have expended on your work. So be prepared NOT to give up the day job (or have a spouse who is willing to work to help support you).

When I'm asked why I chose to be a writer, I respond by saying that I'm really not qualified to do anything else. It's a glib, throwaway answer to a difficult question, but there is a hint of truth in my retort. Despite coming late to writing, I now find it difficult to imagine doing anything else. I have become more aware of the precarious nature of what I do and just how difficult it can be to make a living from my art. 

I suppose the real question to ask should not be why I chose to become a writer, but would I, knowing what I now know, still go into it? And the answer would be a resounding YES!