On Making Money from Writing
On Making Money from Writing
and Not Making Money from Writing
‘Never mention money,’ said my first agent, Mic Cheetham. ‘Never name a figure — leave that to me.’
What she meant was, there was money to be mentioned.
Things have changed.
Since Monday, my timelines have been full of ‘It was a deflating experience’: the novelists who nearly gave up — a much-shared article that appeared in the Guardian.
In it, several writers spoke very directly to Ellen Peirson-Hagger about money — and the scarcity of it in mid-list publishing — though only two figures were mentioned.
One was the £15,000 that Ross Raisin received for winning this year’s BBC National Short Story Award.
The other was the £7,000, which is ‘the median income of full-time authors’ — down 60% since 2006.
Almost every writer who reposted the piece on social media said that they, too, had considered quitting writing — or, at least, giving up publishing with the intention of making a living.
Most need a second and third job in order support themselves as writers.
(As I do, too.)
There are more serious problems in the world, but this is a big question in our small part of it.
How do we keep going?
I know it’s something that sits behind a lot of what goes on with the Diary. I realise one of my jobs is to be encouraging, to make the whole thing seem possible.
Which it is.
When deciding to title this entry, I chose ‘Making Money from Writing’ rather than ‘Not Making Money’.
Accentuate the positive.
Yes, but face the negative.
Yara Rodrigues Fowler was quoted by the Guardian —
It’s very cool when you go to a party and say ‘I’m a novelist’. But actually it’s not very cool to be financially rewarded as if it’s a hobby.
Monday’s story was a follow-up to an interview Ross Raisin gave on winning the award.
“I feel very happy,” said Raisin shortly after finding out that he had won. “I’ve had a bit of a struggle for quite a while with wondering whether writing is still a viable thing for me to continue doing as a living.
I’m not sure how Raisin’s agent feels about him becoming — temporarily at least — the face of authorial impoverishment, but he’s done a brave thing by being honest.
And a service to other writers.
The last time I did the Edinburgh International Book Festival, I was put up in a very nice hotel directly opposite Charlotte Square — where the colourful literary tents and yurts are put up and taken down every year.
I knew that the large suite, which had likely been block booked for the entire fortnight, was most likely being given to me because my dates fitted between those of two bestselling authors.
It wasn’t the sort of hotel I’d ever stay in otherwise.
I considered going to the Festival and saying, Please, can you put me up in a little B&B somewhere, and stick someone else in here, and give me the difference?
That wasn’t going to happen. I was briefly being treated as if I belonged to a different class of writer. I could have done with the cash.
After that experience, I came up with a phrase to explain to myself some of the economics of being a published author —
The perks are the wage.
It’s not that Ross Raisin didn’t deserve to win the BBC National Short Story Award, but any prize money for any writer is a perk.
Their wage should be what they receive, year in year out, from their publishers, home and (if they’re lucky) abroad.
Someone covering your travel and accommodation expenses for a day or two, that goes towards cutting your annual expenditure.
If they pay a fee, especially if it’s generous, that’s a bonus — but it’s still more perk (that people want to take a writing workshop with you) than wage (that they want to buy and read your next book and that your publisher recognises this and supports you toward writing that book).
Ross Raisin is explicit about perk as wage —
The £15,000 prize will “fill in some financial gaps, to hopefully see me through the next couple of years of writing a book”, he says. But he has come to terms with the fact that succeeding in publishing is “a roll of the dice”. Meanwhile, university teaching is his main source of income.
Thanks for mentioning it.
This all needs saying. One still sees aspiring authors (especially in the netherworld of Facebook writers' groups) full of hopes that they can make a good living.
My own history is possibly not typical but may shed a little light. For over 30 years I made my living from writing, in tandem with photography. For context I should add that my partner also had a professional career, and only in my best years did I bring in as much as she did, but I could have got by, though I might be mostly reliant on state pension now.
In this period I did 61 books, hundreds of articles, and a steady trickle of photographic commissions. All of this was related, more or less, to landscape, travel, and outdoor pursuits, particularly walking, climbing and cycling.
In the last ten years I've seen many of my regular gigs wither or disappear. A magazine I'd been a regular with for years went online-only and then ceased altogether. Thomas Cook, for whom I'd done several travel guides, stopped publishing guidebooks. There were others too.
And then there's another publisher, for whom I'd done a number of walking guidebooks, either from new or as revisions/updates. These had paid me more in cash terms than any other job, though with significant costs in travel and accommodation to set against that. Over 20-odd years the fee had remained static, while its real-terms value was approximately halved by inflation. And then they informed me that for the next job they would be offering ten per cent LESS.
With mortgage paid off and pensions coming in, I'm in the fortunate position of being able to turn down an offer like this. And for this and other reasons I'm now giving most of my energy to fiction, with very little expectation of ever making significant money from it. But I really feel for those who also have that itch to write but don't know how they can afford to commit to it.