- with a few asides from moi!
That cheesed off look...
If you go through the mainstream system, your agent will sell your book to a publisher (or you may sell it direct). You get an advance of anticipated earnings on the books that will be sold, then after that amount is ‘earned out’, you start getting royalties. [H: if you're lucky, if you have a decent agent/publisher and if your book actually sells. Read on:]
But apart from the ‘big cheese’ authors, most writers receive a fairly token advance, say £300, sometimes as much as £2-3000, sometimes none, just an agreement of royalties. The publisher covers the cost of editing, [H: but occasionally messes up and prints from an unedited file- as happened with my Pirates Truth and Tales first edition in hardback], book and cover design, production, distribution and some PR and marketing. [H: again if you are lucky. The second and third books in my Arthurian trilogy, when published by Heinemann/Arrow received next to no marketing. Harold the King two week's worth only. A Hollow Crown (all the same publisher) absolutely no marketing whatsoever. Most traditionally published books only get a few week's worth of marketing - anything else is up to the author. Again, as Alison says, this does not apply to the Big Authors.]
The author receives around 7-10% of the book’s sale price.
You have to sell a lot of books to bring in even the minimum wage, let alone cover the hours you spent working at your desk or researching. [H: It took me two years to research and write A Hollow Crown. I received £10k from Heinemann for the UK edition of it back in 1999. I still haven't earned out that payment, which means, to date, I have received less than £500 per year. Nor can I get the rights to the book back because the advance has not yet been earned out - I am expecting that as soon as it is, the book will be dropped. (Hooray - then I can publish a far better new edition myself!)]
Indies pay upfront for cover and interior design, editing, formatting, proofreading, marketing services, advertising and promotion. Some of these can be done by the author if they have the appropriate skills. Once authors have published the books, they buy in print books for events and pay for their own launches, shipping and other expenses. Yes, they receive 65-70% of the book sale price, but that has to cover everything including admin and tax. Again, you have to sell a decent number of books to cover all that and make even a modest profit. Again, I’m not including the megastars here.
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| It's a bit depressing... |
The key findings
- The median annual income of a professional author is £10,500, which is well below the minimum wage.
- The equivalent figure in 2013 was £11,000 and in 2005 it was £12,500.
- In real terms, taking inflation into account, this represents a fall in writing income of 42% since 2005 and 15% since 2013.
- Just 13.7% of authors earn their income solely from writing. In 2005 this was 40%.
- There is a growing gender pay gap, with the average earnings of female professional authors only around 75% of those of the average male professional author, down from 78% in 2005.
You can read the full report here:
So why is author income so low and declining?
Well, there are 257 reasons being bandied about, but here are a few thoughts:
- There are an estimated 7 million books out there in print and ebook, let alone audiobooks
- Sadly, there is a lot of cr*p uploaded to the major retailers which put readers off the whole business of reading
- There are now loads of different competing ways to spend precious leisure hours
- While some big houses put silly prices on ebooks (£14.94 I found recently!), there are a lot of ’99 pence/cents’ books for sale, some terrible, but some really good ones obliged by market forces to sell at that price but which shouldn’t sell themselves so cheaply
- 35% of 99 pence/cents is hardly steady income (30p to the author to cover all their costs and tax.)
- Retailers’ lending schemes which can open the door to abuse.
- A culture of entitlement to a ‘free lunch’. Try asking for free in your favourite coffee shop... I only give a free book away if you sign up to my newsletter – an exchange of value. [H: I only give free pre-published e-file copies to people who agree to leave a review on Amazon - or as barter for, say illustrations or design.]
- Not attributing any value to culture. We have to sweat long hours to produce these books as well as try to contribute something to human knowledge and enlightenment
and...
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| From ‘Pirates: Truth and Tale‘ by Helen Hollick |
PIRACY: known also as theft. It is so NOT okay to download and make copies to distribute free to all and sundry, even if you are a book club.
Authors love our readers; they enthuse about the worlds we create, they are loyal, honourable and happy people who like a ripping tale. Most of us (especially us indies) don’t sting them for 90-100,000 word stories – the ebooks are generally £2.99/$3.99, the price of a latte/pair of tights/high-quality chocolate bar. The paperbacks which weigh nearly half a kilo, or a pound (lb) in imperial, come in at £8.99/£9.99 (and look pretty).
But if people don’t buy books or borrow them from their library (which gives the author a small fee), many authors who would like to eat and pay the rent will have to give up. And that would be terrible, wouldn’t it?
Helen: I'm finding that, like myself, many of my author friends are thinking exactly the sentiment expressed above. Why on earth are we doing this? To produce my next book I will need to spend out about £1,500 to edit it, get a cover designed and publish it via an assisted company. (Much cheaper if I were to 'self-publish' but I haven't the technical know-how.) Now, as Alison's original heading states... no, I am not whining, I enjoy creating the adventures that my (to me, very real) characters get up to ... but it is a hard, hard slog - and no, I don't expect huge sales, enough to tick over is all I expect but it is depressing to not receive decent reviews on Amazon. (I don't mean glowing 5 stars all the time - a modest 4 star is quite acceptable.) And what is especially disheartening, book one of a series sells OKish. Book two, not so bad... book three... well we're into the realms of...
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| ... glumness |
If the books were badly written, boring or whatever, this would be understandable but mine, Alison's, Anna's and many of my other author friends novels are fabulous books to read.
The constant marketing, the daily grind of posting on social media ... doesn't seem to get us anywhere. What more can we do to (tactfully and without boring people) promote our books to a wider readership?
What the answer to this is, how we authors keep going... I don't know. We do, though, because it is a labour of love. We have a compulsion to write, and anyway, we get fed up with our characters (and our loyal readers!) constantly nagging us
To sum up:
- don't buy pirate copies (you're risking getting a nasty virus along with the book anyway - frankly, serve you right)
- leave nice comments on Amazon - a simple 4 star 'I enjoyed this' will suffice
- read the next in a series... and the next...
- sign up to an author's newsletter
- and even MORE helpful... TELL YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR FACEBOOK FRIENDS, YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS ABOUT OUR BOOKS!
Word of mouth is THE best way to help!
(It was only word of mouth by US readers that set a certain series of books about a bespectacled boy wizard firmly on the Bestselling map!)
Honest, us authors will be very appreciative of your input!
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| Alison, Anna, Me |
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| Anna Belfrage I have included Anna because she's in the photo and is a great author. |
article reproduced with permission from Alison Morton
I admire you ladies for your talent and persistence - and for keeping us readers entertained.I'm rethinking my writing journey in the light of the mountain ahead. I won't stop writing but I feel that any form of publication is no longer viable for me.
ReplyDeleteOh Roland don't be disheartened! (despite what I said above!) I guess, if it was easy there would be nothing worth achieving. Alison, Anna and I have been writing for quite a while now - goodness I've been a published author for 25 years now (one does get a little tired of the 'everyday' at 65!) And if you don't climb the mountain how will you ever get to see the view?
DeleteThanks for the encouragement, Helen. With one novel published by a small press, I glimpsed the summit through sheets of rain. Maybe like a mountaineer, I need to find another route. Alison is an inspiration as we were in the same writing group in the UK briefly.
DeleteAlison is marvellous! How about - give it one more go, and then decide...?
DeleteConsidering that.
DeleteDefinitely keep going. Once day the rain will stop and the sun burst through.
DeleteThank you Alison and Helen for the article. You two are in the vanguard of not only Indie writers, but Indie writers who help and encourage other Indie writers. Three, maybe four years ago, the door to Indie writers was unlocked for me by Helen. Previously, like most people, I had rather snobbishly dismissed them as 'not proper writers' of having 'Vanity published.' Since then I have read so many books that have been self published or taken on by a small publisher (most probably at the author's expense) that would easily stand proud alongside mainstream authors on the shelves of the big booksellers. what can we do? Keep on promoting on social media, leaving reviews, encouraging the authors. Inaugurate a 'competition' with a kindly mainstream author or publisher as the figurehead? Britain's Got Writing Talent?
ReplyDeleteThanks Richard - mainstream authors who are not 'big names' have the same problem ... except I have found that the majority of these have no idea of marketing or any inclination to do it. They tread a precarious line because traditional publishers are liable to drop authors or not take up a new contract.
DeleteThe lines are blurring in publishing and readers are increasingly discovering new indie voices writing nowhere near the box! That said, *professional* indies stick to the rules of quality writing, editing, formatting and commissioning a good cover.
DeleteBut piracy – that's no fun for either indie or mainstream. It should be the author or publisher's decision whether to distribute their books for free, for example during a promotion, not somebody who has not invested time, money and a lot of energy and sweat.
Personally I don't give my books for free unless direct from myself to a reviewer. a 99p/c offer is OK though - for as you said Alison, no one expects to go into Costa Coffee and ask for a free cappuccino in order to see what it's like or to review it!
Delete