Writers don’t need victim support and government handouts as The Guardian seems to think. They need positive thinking and a willingness to adapt. Success is earned, not handed out.
If the day ends in the letter ‘y’, you can be sure a Guardian journalist somewhere is getting paid a respectable sum to tell Guardian readers how hard life is for writers and that being a writer automatically entitles said writer to a comfortable salary.
And if the day ends in the letter ‘y’ we can be sure some writers and writer-advocate organisations will be wallowing in self-pity and citing the £7,000 ($8,500) as a fact of life for writers everywhere, and jumping on The Guardian headline, “Impoverished authors are told they should do it for the love. Try saying that to a dentist“, to ram home the bitter unfairness of life.
More Holes Than Swiss Cheese
The trouble is, this puff-piece has more holes than a Swiss cheese.
The author tells us, “the median income for professional writers fell from £12,330 in 2007 to £7,000 in 2022.”
According to what? Tax returns? Invoices and accounts? Publisher statements? Or another dumb-ass author survey asking biased questions to get biased answers?
What Does “Median Income” Mean?
The median income is a way of finding the middle value in a list of numbers. Imagine you have 100 writers lined up based on how much they earn, from the lowest to the highest. The median income is what the 50th person in that line earns. It’s not an average, but rather the middle point, so, on the positive side, it is less affected by extremely high or low earnings.
Safe to say, surveys on author earnings get more responses from those who are struggling than from highly successful authors. Here’s why this might skew the results:
- Sample Bias: Successful authors like JK Rowling or James Patterson or whoever, we can safely say were not sent the survey and did not respond, so their outlier high earnings are not represented.
- Voluntary Participation: Low-earning authors might be more motivated to respond to highlight their financial struggles, whereas high-earning authors might not feel the need to share their success even if they are aware of the survey.
- Lack of Context: The survey doesn’t specify how many books each author has written, how they are published, or how widely available they are. In fact it doesn’t even specify that these are book authors. A writer could be a poet, a songwriter, playwright, a film script writer, a journalist at a national and globally available high-end newspaper like The Guardian, or a journalist for a small town local newspaper.
Different Author Situations
- Successful Authors: Those who continually produce high-quality content and understand the market often live comfortably.
- Struggling Authors: Many first-time or less experienced authors may not see much financial success due to factors like market demand, availability of their work, and the level of effort put into editing, marketing, and understanding their audience.
In essence, while the median income provides a snapshot, it doesn’t tell the whole story. A more comprehensive analysis would consider a range of factors, including the number of books published, the methods of publication, and the marketing efforts behind them.
I would invite the author of the Guardian post to share his own earnings, given he has appointed himself spokesperson for the unwashed writerly masses and thinks writers are told to work for love.
By whom, exactly? Maybe he’s been listening to too much 10CC. Art for art’s sake? That is not what writers are told. But nor are writers told that being a writer will be easy, well paid or a job for life. Yet many writers seem to think that’s how it should be, including the Guardian journalist, who says smugly, “Impoverished authors are told they should do it for the love. Try saying that to a dentist.”
Yes, dentists are well paid, but show me the dentist who wakes up of a morning with no qualifications and no experience, works from home when they want, takes time off when they want, and does the bits of the job they enjoy doing rather than the work the customer wants and needs.
You need root canal work? Well, I’ve only been doing this since yesterday and I dropped out of college, so I only know how to floss, and I wouldn’t know a root canal from the Panama Canal, but hey, there’s a sign outside that says I’m a dentist, so you owe me ten million bucks.
Here’s the thing, Guardian author: It takes years and years of dedicated study and crazy amounts of cash in the form of student loans and expenses at university to even be thinking about calling yourself a dentist, let alone becoming a well-paid one.
United States
- Bachelor’s Degree: Typically takes 4 years. While there’s no specific major required, a degree in a biological science can be helpful.
- Dental Admission Test (DAT): Required for dental school admission.
- Dental School: Usually takes 4 years to earn a Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) or Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) degree.
- Licensing: Must pass the National Board Dental Examinations and any state or regional licensing exams.
- Optional Specialisation: Additional training (2-3 years) for specialties like orthodontics, periodontics, or oral surgery.
United Kingdom
- A-Levels: Typically takes 2 years after high school, with subjects like biology and chemistry.
- Dental Degree: Usually takes 5 years to complete a Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) or Bachelor of Dental Science (BChD).
- Postgraduate Training: 1-2 years of Dental Foundation Training (DFT) or Vocational Training (VT).
- Registration: Must register with the General Dental Council (GDC) to practice.
Exactly what qualifications does a writer require to kick off their career?
The Guardian piece, aimed at non-writers who will have no idea how ridiculous parts of this post are, explains how for UK authors, “finding out how many books they have sold in the run-up to Christmas will mean the difference between turning on the heating and sitting shivering through the January frost.”
WTF? Non-writer readers may fall for that sob-story, but this is meant to be factual article, not the Guardian’s Christmas fiction selection. Even self-publishers using Amazon’s KDP have to wait 60 days or more for their payout, and no traditional publisher on the planet pays out Christmas royalties in January. Maybe the previous Christmas, yes, but that goes to the heart of the failings in this Guardian post. That there are any number of valid issues with writerly income, but the author prefers to pander to faux narratives rather than actually think through how the industry works.
And it gets worse. “In a country proud of its literary history, we’re at a tipping point when the number of books and plays written could soon collapse with the number of people who can afford to create them.”
WTFx2!!! What is this guy on? There are more books being published than at any time in history.
To be fair, there are fleeting moments of sanity that shine through the BS.
“One real problem is that we need a churn of stories so that each generation can find its own. Society changes daily – demographically, technologically, psychologically – and we must reflect that. Jane Austen may still speak to us about romance, but not so much about race relations. Hence, Netflix’s Bridgerton.”
But even here, the author defeats his own case. It is the very fact that audience demand is in constant flux that makes earning a living as a writer so challenging, especially for traditionally-published authors that will take a year or more from accepting a finished manuscript to reaching the market.
The author also juggles opposing notions when it comes to authors paying tax.
“We need (books) written because they fuel industries that pay for our roads to be swept and our hospitals to be staffed.”
This said having previously argued in the same post, “In the Republic of Ireland most income from writing and musical composition is tax-free. Something for the chancellor to mull while she glumly stares at the Treasury projections for 2025.” Hey, let’s have our cake and eat it!
The TNPS Take
Yes, the financial struggles of authors are indeed concerning, but it is essential to recognise the key differences between professions like dentistry and writing. Becoming a dentist requires years of rigorous training, significant financial investment in education, and the repayment of student loans. Dentists provide essential healthcare services that are universally acknowledged and compensated for their expertise.
In contrast, authors do not require formal qualifications and can begin writing with minimal investment. The success of their work is highly variable; some may earn significant amounts, while others may struggle. The quality of the writing, understanding of the market, and efforts in self-promotion or working with reputable publishers greatly impact an author’s financial success.
The argument that authors should be paid regardless of the success of their work ignores the reality that financial compensation in most professions is tied to demand, quality, and marketability. Successful authors invest time in honing their craft, understanding their audience, and producing high-quality content. Those who do not see success might need to evaluate the market demand for their writing, their methods of publication, and their efforts in reaching readers.
The Sense of Entitlement is Problematic
Further, though, the sense of entitlement some authors may feel, and that shine through in this Guardian article, is problematic. Writing, like any other profession, requires dedication, continuous improvement, and an understanding of the industry’s dynamics. Expecting a lifetime salary from a single piece of work is unrealistic in any field.
Supporting authors involves recognising the value of their work and providing resources for education, mentorship, and market insights. However, it also requires authors to acknowledge the competitive nature of the industry and the need to continually develop their skills and strategies.
Sorry, It’s Got To Be Mentioned: AI
And at no time is this more so than as we enter the age of AI, where we will lose our jobs to robots if our jobs involve churning out mediocre and shallow content at a snail’s pace with total disregard to audience needs, while whinging about our financial plight instead of looking at ways to improve our prospects by embracing new opportunities.
No-one promised us a rose garden and a job for life, and it does us no favours as an industry to have nonsense pieces like this discolouring the already muddy waters of author remuneration.
Most of us will never be JK Rowlings or James Pattersons, and as writers we need to justify our earnings in the same way as the coffee barista or the truck driver or the the dentist.
Playing The Victim
We like to play the victim, but we are the lucky ones. When our barista pours that tall skinny latte for the customer she/he knows she/he’s going to have to do it again and again, today, the next day, next week and next year, at the time and place required by his/her employer, or his/her money stops. And they will get paid the same rate whether they dish up fifty cups of coffee during the day or five hundred.
The dentist may get paid a lot more per work session, fully justified by the years of training and the student loans incurred, but they know when they stop work, the money stops.
Writers that think having written a book, regardless of if it sells, somehow entitles them to a more-than-living-wage for all eternity are living in a fantasy world of their own creation, fed by nonsense pieces like this Guardian article.
This is Too Much Money! Please Don’t Pay Me So Much!
We all love to complain about author royalties, but show me the successful author, raking in cash by the bucketful month after month, year after year for books they haven’t touched for 5 years or more, and who can ratchet up those earnings still further by writing another book, who is saying “This is too much. I don’t deserve this much money.”
Writing books is not like most other jobs. It’s a gamble, like wanting to be a singer or an actor. And unless we are totally deluded, we all know that from day one. Our book may or may not sell. It may or may not earn out the advance or cover the self-pub costs. It may or may not top the charts and earn us more money than we ever dreamed of. And even if it does, the next books may flop.
If writers want a steady living wage, go train for a job that pays a steady living wage. Set your alarm every night, wake up every morning and commute to work, do your job, commute home and collect your weekly wage or monthly salary, knowing you’ve got to do it all again the next day, and that no matter how hard you work, it will be your employer getting rich, not you.
The Luckiest People On The Planet
Successful writers are the luckiest people on the planet, just behind me (I’m doubly lucky – I get to write TNPS and teach children, and it’s 30C in mid-January – you can’t put a price on that!).
Unsuccessful writers need to take a step back and ask why they are not successful. Because yes, writing for a living is a gamble, but the odds are stacked in our favour, if we learn our trade and understand the market and what is in demand.
Writers don’t need victim support and government handouts as The Guardian seems to think. They need positive thinking and a willingness to adapt. Success is earned, not handed out.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsletter.
