You may have seen this in the media this week, you may have missed it. I'm talking about a very sobering article that appeared in The Guardian showing how, for the majority of authors, their income has plummeted to 'abject' levels.
The article's here -
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/08/authors-incomes-collapse-alcs-survey?CMP=fb_gu
It's a very sad indictment on the state of our society where people will happily hand over £3-4 for a coffee that takes a barista a couple of minutes to make and which is gone within ten minutes and yet they baulk at paying the same, or more, for a book which has taken an author at least a year of their life to craft and will provide them, the reader, with entertainment for a few days or weeks or even years if it gains a place on their bookshelves. I wonder if you know that the author of a book on which a movie is based is not invited to the premiere as a matter of course? And in the squabbles on payment that have erupted between amazon and publishers over the last year or so, who do you think ends up being squeezed? 'Celebrity' biographies swallow much of publishers' budgets leaving virtually nothing left with which they can nurture new talent - Val McDermid admitted recently that in today's market she would be a failed novelist. How sad for us as readers to have never enjoyed her books nor the TV series generated by them and how ironic for the publishers if she had never gone on to sell the 10 million books she has sold. I attended an author event a while ago and was shocked by the number of household names the writer quoted that would also be failed novelists if they were starting out today.
When will publishing wake up and realise that if a career in writing becomes the premise of the rich, all creative sectors will suffer. The image of a writer starving in their garret while writing their 'great work' has never been closer to the truth.
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