The Word Cloud

(quote) "It all came down to me saying that I don't think financial share and credit are tidily equable."

Is it comparable with the situation we had with nurses in this country - where a pat on the back will keep them happy? Someone had to fight on nurses' behalf in order for them to get a fair wage. Who is fighting on writers' behalf to prevent them being exploited?

Well the Society of Authors and the Writers' Guild have done a great job, over the last 50 years, and the other thing which has transformed trade authors' lives is the growing power of agents. Contracts used to be much, much worse than they are now.

But the thing is, we're all self-employed. We have no union, beyond the Society, and if we don't want the job, someone else will. Each of us only has as much clout as we have sales or still, to some extent, literary glory, to bring to a publisher. It's a brute, capitalist market: if a publisher thinks that there's a market for a book which is big enough to cover the costs of producing the book and reaching that market, however uber-literary or gutter-commercial, they'll buy that book. If they don't, they won't. Occasionally one agent can see a bit further than the others, and succeeds in persuading a publisher what the view looks like, and you get a mad, left-field success, such as the Curious Incident or Longitude. But by definition those are successes you can't predict.

But the flip side is true: no one's making us write.We're not actually like coffee farmers, whose wealth and skills are tied to their land, with all the perils of climate and exchange rates that go with it. No one makes us write. It's even possible to do it while holding down another job, and most of us do, though we prefer writing-related jobs if we can get them.

As to value, I reckon I'm responsible for about 85% of the value of the text in a novel of mine - I have wonderful, insightful help from both my very editing agent, and my actual editor, which would cost me thousands and thousands of pounds if I had to pay for it. But finding and reaching readers is a very different thing, and most of that I'm not fitted to do. If I'm not willing to join in with publishers, and they weren't with booksellers, and work with their cut of the price of a book, then my work won't reach the readers I want to reach.

There's quite a neat analogy, which is me in a restaurant, choosing a bottle of wine. The liquid in the bottle is what I want, but in order for it to reach me from the vineyard's cellars, a whole structure has to be set up. It's not only bottlers and label designers and negociants and shippers (not to mention bankers smoothing out the lumps in the cashflow, for example) it's also the wholesaler choosing this year's vintages, and the restaurateur building his winelist, and so on. That all has to be paid for, and it's all part of my ultimate experience of the wine: without all that stuff going on, I'd be drinking tap water.

It's true that readers don't have the faintest idea how much - or rather how little - authors make. I make 59p from a copy of one of my novels sold at full price, and 47p if it's sold at big discount, or in a 3-for-2 or similar paid-for promotion (such as 'book-of-the-month'). And most ordinary authors don't - on the whole - get paid for festival appearances, readings or other such, even when the punters have paid for tickets.

Who is fighting on writers' behalf to prevent them being exploited?

Any reader can, for a start. Anyone who wants to earn a bit of their living from writing, or just wants to make sure that the writers they read can, could start by putting their readerly money where their writerly mouth is. As a writer, I'm not about to refuse to supply any channel which might sell some of my books, even if my publisher would let me. But anyone who wants to support the structures which pay the writer the fairest wage, should bear in mind the following:

• Don't ever, ever buy a book second-hand if it's still in print to buy new.
• Whether or not your budget is tight, support your local library: vote with your feet and use it (or lose it, the way things are these days). Don't forget that Public Lending Right payments are a substantial proportion of many writers' income, as well as their confidence that their work is still read. (Personally, it's the figures for Large Print loans which always make me choke up, and I'm not the only one.)
• Think twice before you buy a book at a big discount, or in a paid-for promotion. Some of the money you save is coming directly out of the writer's pocket, and the rest out of the pocket of the publisher who's put a lot of money into the gamble of publishing that writer.
• Don't buy from the big booksellers - Tesco, Asda, Amazon, Waterstones - until you've checked if your local independent can get it for you. It's very rare that they can't, it's very often quicker, and now that even Foyles have an online operation no one lives too far from an indie.
• Give Amazon some competition - try the very excellent Book Depository: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/
• Do look for a publisher's own e-commerce site. That's really what keeps small, independent, specialist publishers in business, and they're what keep the booktrade on its toes (think Tindal Street, Canongate, Salt).
• Do buy books direct from Amazon if that's the only way to get hold of them: Amazon is the lifeblood of little publishers without their own distribution network, and for authors whose books are no longer on the bookshop shelves.

Wow. I've always bought from my local independent bookshop thinking I was just doing them a favour and keeping them in business (plus I really like it in there). I never thought I was doing something good for the writer as well - perhaps even the publisher. That's an eye-opener for me, Emma. And I s'pose this is the one opportunity to say with pride that I have never bought a book (or anything else) from Amazon.

I will most certainly continue with my actions. Now, I wonder if I can keep my local butcher in business too?

It has to be said that if the indie gets their books from a wholesaler, as they largely do, then your book may have been sold to the wholesaler at high discount, in which case the author may not make any more money than if you bought it in Tesco. But another reason for supporting your local indie is that the good ones are fantastic at supporting their local authors. It's done my relationship with my local indies no harm at all that they knew me as a good customer long before I bounced in with a proof of TMOL..

And more broadly, indies have something in common with small and niche publishers: only a couple of people have to decide whether to stock a book or not, so within the boundaries of all bookshop space basically being real estate, they're often more interesting and less target-driven than the big boys. It's very noticeable that the new regime at Waterstones has realised that they may be owned by HMV but they're not a discount record store, and instead had a long, hard look at what good booksellers who know their books and know their customers do... and decided to let their staff do a bit more of it.

These last couple of posts have just sparked my instant problem-solving silly ideas side. I was trying to come up with an innovative way to get people back into bookshops (rather than order online) through the product itself.

One of the key issues is that a book is exactly the same if you buy it from an indie bookshop, Tescos or Amazon, so most folks choose the cheapest/most convenient channel. So the answer could be... make the book variable in some way. But then it all backfired in terms of solving the initial specific problem, because the idea that hatched is more suited to eBooks/POD, internet sales/delivery:

Have yourself written into the novel as one of the characters.

There are loads of reasons why it wouldn't work, but just on a basic level, your name and maybe key physical attributes like hair colour (shown rather than told, of course) overwritten onto an appropriate existing character. Look, I did say silly.

EmmaD,

I take my hat off to you.

Your dedication to the heated debate, and the enlightenment of wet-behind-the-ears writers like myself, is admirable. For example, I have immediately looked up The Society of Authors.

Indeed, The Society of Authors would appear to be the perfect organisation to introduce the FairRead campaign. Are they a go-getting bunch? I'm sure they will love the FairRead idea, a symbol to reassure readers that the authors are receiving at least 50% of the book's price. As soon as the Assistant Deputy General Secretary gets wind of the idea I'm sure he will waste no time before alerting the Deputy General Secretary who in turn will stampede towards the General Secretary's office to deliver the wonderful news.

Unfortunately, owing to my lack of pedigree, they won't let me join! I suppose they have to keep out the riff-raff, but even so, I have to admit to being a little offended. So can I ask a favour, EmmaD, would you be so kind as to pass on the FairRead idea on my behalf?

Thanks in advance.

Ron

"One of the key issues is that a book is exactly the same if you buy it from an indie bookshop, Tescos or Amazon, so most folks choose the cheapest/most convenient channel."

Which is why online bookselling has been so successful - relative say to online clothes shopping, where you can't feel and try on the clothes. Having said that, even Amazon admit that browsing online can't be the same as browsing physically. But that still puts Tesco and Village Books on an equal footing, and Tesco can do the prices...

Have yourself written into the novel as one of the characters.

There are companies which offer this for children's books: give your darling dear Millie and the Three Bears for Christmas. Perhaps snobbishly, I tend to assume that it's not going to be High Art, but I can see the appeal.

Ron, I'll have a word with the Secretary - there's only the one - at the AGM. ;)

On problem is that while on the one hand we're happy to try the impossible task of persuading the reading public that only JKR and James Patterson are millionaires, we're reluctant to diss our own publishers by sounding hard done by by people we (on the whole) like and respect and above all need. Besides, it's a very small trade and word gets round... the entire UK book industry, from authors to agents to printers to booksellers employs rather fewer people than Shell UK.

And, to be fair, it really isn't the publisher's evilness: the problem is fundamentally structural. The discounting culture means that it's the publisher who absorbs the bulk of the price-cutting, and the writer shares in that. Indeed, until we move over fully to a royalty based on a % of net receipts (as we have with e-books, and various other things where the selling price is particularly unpredictable), the publisher actually absorbs the variations in discount, and lets us have the same cut regardless. Discounting came in with the supermarkets: the end of the Net Book Agreement was the price to us of getting our books in there (which is basically a Good Thing; the figures prove that they have enlarged the overall market.) But books for Tesco are marginal: they want to make money, but they don't have any obligation to look like a bookseller in the wider, cultural sense, so can be completely ruthless about what and how they sell, and what they're willing to demand (covers a notorious issue) of publishers in return for taking the vast numbers of a book which they do. It's a very, vary rare book that gets anywhere much in the bestseller lists if a supermarket isn't selling it, but I'm sure Mark Haddon and Joanne Harris aren't complaining...

So publishers are, if you like, already behaving like a Fair Trade organisation, in guaranteeing us a price (though not volume of sales, because they can't) when they don't know what they'll be able to sell on for. Indeed, you could argue that they go a step further, in paying three-quarters of that price before they've even sold a single book, as an advance. The chief effect of the rise of the agent has been to increase advances, and there's a case to be made that in the book trade, as in any other industry, all that's happening is a brutal realisation that the great days are gone.

Which is very poor comfort if you've just been offered £5000 for a two-book deal with a mainstream house, which represents say four years of work. Unfortunately, that reverting-to-normal has coincided with the e-book, which really is a completely new phenomenon, and really does change the structure of things. So the publishers aren't just tightening their belts, they're shaking in their shoes.

(EmmaD) "Ron, I'll have a word with the Secretary "

Many thanks EmmaD. You might also inform him that Ron Blanco, a keen writer, is desperate to donate his £90 subscription to the Society and perhaps he would make an exception to his usual "no riff-raff" policy in this case? Please also ask him to publish his salary, pointing out that such transparency is vital in a non profit making organisation. And finally, if you can find out why they are non-contactable between 1-2pm on Fridays it would save my mind whirling with possibilities.

I have heard many authors, who have publishing contracts, talk highly of their publishers. They do not appear to begrudge the measly sums they are being paid. I hope one day to be on that side of the fence, applauding my publisher and gratefully accepting my 1/13th share of the book I've spent years writing. But meanwhile I will continue to argue on your behalf, EmmaD.

I see your point about the need to raise the public's awareness of the plight of authors. I wonder if it would help to have a breakdown of the cover price printed on the back cover, next to the price?

Also, going back to the FairRead idea. I think it was you who pointed out that the writer's input is the same whether a book is published in a physical book or an eBook so perhaps, rather than dealing in percentages, FairRead would ensure that the author receives a certain minimum amount, say £2, for the book. Then publishers and retailers and all the other vultures can squabble over the remainder. A step forward do you think?

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Leaving aside the net-receipts model, we do get a fixed minimum amount: a percentage of cover price. That's what I meant: it's the rest of the chain which absorbs the variations in discount. Besides, much as I'd like to be immune, I don't actually see why I, alone all the organisations involved in the chain from writer to reader, should be immune from the variations in what the market will stand. I'm not, of course, but the variations are reflected in the size of the advance in the first place, not in what I get per book (it's not as if I've ever actually had a royalty cheque, after all). And if it turns out not to earn what the publisher hoped, I don't have to give the money back: it's the publisher who absorbs the mis-judgement. Their financial risk in publishing my book is much, much bigger than mine: mine's chiefly time and professional craft and art, theirs is around £100,000 of hard cash...

And, frankly, if me getting 47p per book is what it takes for my publisher to do a deal with WHSmith and by that means sell a lovely lot of copies in a week, then as far as I'm concerned it's worth it and they do too. 7o% of those copies went for £2.99: it simply isn't realistic to expect to get £2 of that. And one of the benefits that they paid for hugely (much more in absolute terms than I did) accrues chiefly to me not to them, in that it made me, technically, a bestselling author and I can call myself that forever, even if I walked away from that publisher forever tomorrow: that's the power of being freelance. I'm not at all sure that I'd agree with what I gather Harry's new book is about, but I do admit that capitalism works both ways, and just occasionally to our benefit.

Sorry about the crap at the top...

And I realise I'm taking your suggestion more seriously than no doubt you intended. I'm afraid I have a bit of a knee-jerk response to the topic, because there's so much nonsense floating around on the net about how it all works, and how the book trade is one huge brick-walled and wicked conspiracy to hold back divinely inspired writers from eager readers... At the best such misinformation makes people think that self-publishing is the answer. At the worst it breeds the stalkers that many agents and editors and even writers have suffered from...

(EmmaD) "And I realise I'm taking your suggestion more seriously than no doubt you intended."

Not at all. I take on board all your excellent comments, but am becoming more and more convinced that FairRead is the way forward. In fact I've already started thinking about the logo - maybe a woman with a quill huddled around a fire? I believe that if readers were made aware of the situation they would be willing to select their purchases so that the author, the mastermind and creator, received the lion's share (50% for real book/ 75% for eBook) or a respectable fixed amount (e.g. £2). I think it's an idea that is worth pursuing. What do you think the impact would be?

ps As a gesture of thanks for all your help here, I would be grateful if you could point me towards your first novel. In fact I will go further and recommend it to my book club. So, fingers crossed, there might be half-a-dozen 47p's coming your way next month

I think it would have to be a man huddled over a fire: everyone knows that women only write for pocket money, and only about handbags... ;)

Always happy to sell my book to people - thank you! And if your group does read it, I'd love to know what they thought:

http://www.emmadarwin.com/pages/writing/the_mathematics_of_love.htm

"the author, the mastermind and creator, received the lion's share (50% for real book/ 75% for eBook) or a respectable fixed amount (e.g. £2). I think it's an idea that is worth pursuing. What do you think the impact would be?"

I'm no economist, but I think the impact would be the opposite of what you intend: it would be an extreme version of what's already happened to some degree in the last fifteen years, and particularly in the last two. Publishers would be forced to restrict themselves to an ever-narrower range of books. They'd have to sell sooooooo many of a title to cover the costs involved in publishing it, that about 75% of their list would get axed immediately. Which would include me, Harry, and every other author on the Cloud, and about 95% of the members of the Society of Authors...

(EmmaD) "Publishers would be forced to restrict themselves to an ever-narrower range of books. They'd have to sell sooooooo many of a title to cover the costs involved in publishing it, that about 75% of their list would get axed immediately."

I'm not so sure. My intuition, in contrast to your logic, suggests that more authors would sell books, but in smaller quantities. The newly-aware consumer would have a choice to pay a little extra for a book with the FairRead logo. Publishers wouldn't necessarily have to make any less profit. They could still agree contracts outside of the FairRead system and sell books cheap without the logo. It would be up to the readers to decide whether to support it or not, wouldn't it?

"more authors would sell books, but in smaller quantities."

I don't think it goes without saying that this is a good thing, though. Is it really better to have more authors struggling to write while paying the rent and feeding the children by other means, or a few authors who can actually earn a decent chunk of their living writing (earning all their living is past praying for) what they're best fitted to write? Having more authors selling less sounds inclusive/democratic, but it's actually exclusive/elitist. It actually means that increasingly the only people who can afford to be full-time writers are people who've either already made, or married, or inherited money. The people which such a system excludes are precisely the people literature needs most: most of the population.

I know suggesting that there should be fewer people selling more books is a tricky thing to say on a forum full of aspiring writers, but it's already the truth at the literary end of the market: my agent's view (and she has many authors much more fiercely literary than me) is that agents are actually too successful in selling literary fiction, and publishers are too willing to take it on and then... sell very few. A literary hardback by an unknown is doing well if it sells into 3 figures, these days, and as a paperback a thousand or two is considered normal. And it certainly won't make money. The market for literary fiction is finite, and the cake is, arguably divided too many ways, so that almost no author gets more than crumbs

But lovely though a FairRead campaign would be, I don't see how it wouldn't dent the publisher's profit on that book. They already make a loss on 90% of their list: where's the money to come from?

"I know suggesting that there should be fewer people selling more books is a tricky thing to say on a forum full of aspiring writers"

It is a little depressing, but I will try to keep my chin up.

Of course, just because successful authors may sell less copies does not mean they would earn less money. The only certainty from a FairRead campaign is that for each book sold, the author would get more than they are getting now, in most cases. That's £2 / copy, Emma, as opposed to 47p or whatever.

"where's the money to come from? "

Sorry, I hadn't finished...

"where's the money to come from? "

Either the people who buy books, or someone else in the chain. Despite the fluctuating estimates of who makes what percentage it seems to me that the publishers and retailers are best placed to absorb the difference.

And could it also lead to a better quality of book being written. Without authors being forced to churn out a whole series of interchangeable novels, in robot-fashion, perhaps they would be more daring in what they write. As a reader I don't wish to read a book that has been "churned out". Nor do I want to read a book that has been corrupted by publishers commercial pressures e.g. "please can you make that character a born-again christian , for the US market."

As readers we could also do with less advertising and marketing being spent on books. I'd like to see a non-profit making website, produced by The Society of Authors, which listed new books and allowed readers to review them.

Authors risk their time and confidence on a book, but they are in large supply. Publishers risk whatever capital they have, in the knowledge that the majority of books they produce will lose them money. They are high demand.

" there are not enough readers to support the number of writers currently available."

I hate to see you depressed, Babblefish, so I will try to lift your spirits by suggesting that you might be wrong. Just think how many people you know who read books and compare that with the number of people you know who write books. Please get back to me with the stats and let's work through the equation - it may not be as bad as you have been led to believe!

Chin up,

Ron

Oh don't worry, I'm not depressed, or particularly worried. It's sunny outside and I'm having a nice day, I just prefer to be realistic about things.

The only market where writers outnumber readers is poetry. If you look at the bestseller list for any given week, the top three books will have sold 20-30,000, and the next seventeen will have sold 7-10,000. Add about a third as much again, because Neilsen BookScan figures consistently under-report (not Neilsen's fault - not all book sellers are willing to sign up), and you get the total number through the till in that week.

They're not all writers...

Emma

(Babblefish) "as I said, the numbers don't add up."

Of course you are right, it is not guaranteed that everyone who writes a book will be able to afford to make a career out of it. But if you only write one book in your whole life, and it is worth reading, then shouldn't you receive a fair share of the income?

(Babblefish) "if offered an E-book contract I would happily take it"

If you look at EmmaD's link which estimates the cover-price breakdown for eBooks, it suggests that, on average, nearly 50% of the price goes towards the publisher's profits. That is profit, over and above the cost of producing the book and everything else. For real books, it is the retailer who pulls the strings and claims their 50% profit. It is easy to understand why this happens. There is nobody who will stand up for the new writer, not even the Society of Authors, so we need someone who will.

(Babblefish) "the point of being an author is to write, not to make money"

An admirable attitude Babblefish, and one that will probably lead to a more original and honest piece of work than those produced by commercially-minded authors with publishers breathing down their necks. The chances are I would rather read Babblefish's first novel than EmmaD's second. No offence meant EmmaD.

When all the tribes of Ireland gathered at Tara, there were ten thousand poets in total. And - according to Paddy Kavanagh - it's never been let drop below that number since.

"The chances are I would rather read Babblefish's first novel than EmmaD's second. No offence meant EmmaD."

Maybe not, but it's a pretty offensive thing to say, nonetheless. What makes you think that my second novel is in the least inferior to my first?

Emma

Just to expand on that point: a lot of people have one book in them: you learn more with every book you write, because every book presents you with new problems to find and then solve.

To my mind, the mark of a good writer (as opposed to someone who can write one good book) is that you go on writing, and go on getting better. The day I can't do that is the day I'll give up, and take up market gardening.