How Writers Earn Money

At what point should writers be paid? Do they qualify for the job like a doctor or a teacher does, after a lengthy apprentice and is part of what they are paid for all those years of training?

Parallels with other professions

I used to be a language teacher and it looked to many as if I worked 9.00 until 3.30 39 weeks a year.  Of course, that isn’t really true: teaching weeks tended to involve 52 hours’ work and some work carried on during the holidays. I had to keep my languages up also. This meant going abroad and reading books and watching films in other languages. Or were those leisure activities? Did it ever really stop?

It is similar for me now as a writer. Is reading work? Or thinking about my plot and characters as I drive, cook or iron? Or perhaps watching and critiquing TV dramas?

Or are we rather like those who work in the catering and beauty industries? The basic wage (the advance or the fee) is very small so we rely on tips to bolster our income (royalties, PLR and ALCS payments, and revenue from advertising)?

Content cannot be free

One of my books has been downloaded several thousand times from a site that is displaying it illegally. It’s getting good reviews, mind. My publisher has requested its removal twice. It has been removed but up it has popped again. I’d be at least £2000 better off if those people who had downloaded it had bought a copy of the book or borrowed it from the library. There is still the impression that if something is available electronically it should be free.

No guys, people who write, produce music and make films, need to eat, be clothed and be sheltered.  They also need some money in order to be able to carry on producing content.

But for goodness sake, IT people, shouldn’t it be the easiest thing in the world to be fair to everyone? Charge a low rate for the content – there are fewer overheads, no stock to carry or ship - yet pay enough so that the years of experience and hours of work are rewarded – including those of the IT experts?

Sidelines

Writers often do other things to keep the cash flowing. Here are a few examples:

• Offer  readings. Again there is a strong parallel here with the music industry; the live performance is a type of value-added commodity
• Edit others And why not? It’s hard, perhaps impossible, to edit yourself.
• Teach creative writing - hopefully because they have something to offer and not because “those who can’t, teach”. In fact, most people who teach creative writing accelerate their own learning as they teach. There is, anyway, a sort of obligation for those who can to pass it on.

The point is, even those who are recognised as writers who produce something worth reading often have to supplement what they earn directly from their writing by earning something from extra activities.

Who should write?

Anyone who writes is a writer. Only the very best, so it seems, however, are allowed to earn purely from writing. And many who eventually do serve that long apprenticeship. Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, and more recently David Almond and Philip Pullman, worked as jobbing writers before they found the big time. J K Rowling may seem to have struck gold at the first attempt but she had a long creative development and a few hard knocks first. 

The Dutch offering state benefits to any artist who has sold anything in the last five years and the Irish exempting writers from tax recognise this a little.

It is hard, but anyone who truly wants to get there can, if that person perseveres. But it’s a big if. It is certainly not easy. We have to pass the gatekeepers. It’s probably going to be a little easier if you have some talent and a heck of a lot of self-discipline.

Who are the gatekeepers?

If you are published traditionally, then agents and editors are quite significant. Then come the booksellers, the reviewers and the general public.

Anyone can self-publish directly to the Internet. Then the popularity of the writer can have an influence on what is read and what is liked. We all become gatekeepers as we select, recommend and comment. The writers themselves play a role as they ensure a fine balance between maintaining visibility and overloading others with information about their texts.    

Can it be done?

Get it all right and eventually you may be allowed to spend your time writing and doing activities related to it. Pass all of the gatekeepers and you may even eventually earn enough that you do the secondary activities out of a sense of moral obligation rather than because you need the money.

Above all else, you must, of course, write brilliantly.     

              

Which services should self-publishing authors pay for?

More and more people are self-publishing. Print on demand facilities and Amazon’s Kindle have made it extremely easy and you can now do this without the fear of ending up with a garage full of books.

The message seems to be, particularly from writers who have gone the conventional route but who are now resurrecting their out-of-print backlist, that people who self-publish will have to market like mad, but then those published by the Big Six have to do than anyway, and that you should never pay huge sums of money to have your book published.

Some services you need

I agree with the former argument, I’m not so sure I agree with the latter.

Editing

Your book needs editing. Even the best writers need editing and copy-editing and the writers themselves are not the best placed persons to do that. Editing takes time. I’m a publisher as well as being a writer and even a beautifully and competently written 1000 word short story will take me at least 30 minutes to edit. Now think of a patchier 100,000 novel. I can edit, copy-edit and critique, but find it best not to do all three for the same text – especially if I actually wrote the text. Even at minimum wage, you’d soon be racking up the £s. It’s absolutely accepted that freelancers charge more per hour than staff earn per hour – because so much of their time is spent in tendering for more work – and for publishing houses / indie authors they’re still better value for money than employing someone full time.  

£240? Low estimate?  

Designing

Your book needs designing. You may be able to learn how to do this correctly but this will take time. This isn’t just a matter of getting it to look nice. It’s also about making sure that the software that’s going to print the book understands what you want. Different formats require different formatting. The Unicode you use in a Word programme is not supported on Amazon Kindle, for example. Just look what it does to foreign accents. You save a lot of time and effort if you let someone in the know deal with this. Also, if you use a proper designer, they’ll know about all of the conventions.

£120.00  / 12 hours? (after you’ve learnt the ropes?)

Cover design

You can use a stock picture for a few pounds or pence but you’re still need your designer to make sure the title, spine, bar-code and blurb all look right and end up in the right place.  Of course, again, you can learn this yourself but remember this will take time and actually designing each cover will also take time.

£60- £300? 6 hours if using stock photo /art work

Marketing / publicity

Word of mouth always works well but you have to be established. Do you want to get someone to do the nitty gritty – getting out press releases, contacting indie bookshops, nagging W.H Smiths and Waterstones  etc? Or is that just more time you’re willing to steal from your writing day? Buy £150 worth of someone else’s time? Or expertise – they might be better at press releases than you are.   

I’m not counting all the social networking here – we all do that anyway. You’ll have to do that as well.

Book trailer

If you have the expertise, the insight and the time to do this yourself, great, if not I’ve seen people charging €30 - €150 – and much more, I’m sure. They do seem necessary these days.   

When you should pay and when you shouldn’t

To sum up, I’d say most of the above you can learn and if the budget’s tight you could even swap editing procedures with a group of colleagues. Whatever happens,  however, you should own your own ISBNs or you could form a cooperative with writing colleagues.  

If you add the above up, and then throw in the costs for setting-up printing costs you’re around about the £1000 mark. This is remarkably similar to what some self-publishing companies and some vanity publishers charge.

The crucial difference comes in what happens once the book has been set up. If you’ve paid these charges for someone to do all of these activities for your book, that company should have no more profit from it. If they handle the orders for you, fair enough, an admin charge should come in every time. And probably it’s best not to use the same company for each procedure. Employ people according to their strengths.

If you’ve paid those upfront charges you should receive all of the profits.  You have become the publisher. Vanity publishers and less scrupulous self-publishing companies want to charge you an upfront fee and merely give you a royalty. Steer clear of them.

The way forward

The traditional publisher risks those services on you and pays you a royalty on every book sold. These days royalties on electronic books are quite generous. There are still many advantages for going this route to the writer.

Personally I’m enjoying having books published in a variety of different ways – some are by traditional publishers, some are merely on Kindle, some are self-published but in print and some are published by small presses. Diversity is probably healthy anyway these days.                     

 

 

Writers and Twitter – a personal view

Twitter helps to keep me sane and keep me connected. I follow a lot of writers and a lot of writers follow me. I also follow a couple of choirs, some teachers, one or two Holocaust organisations, a couple of language students, one or two news organizations, the Greater Manchester Police (I started doing that during the riots in August 2011), a few publishers and a favourite seaside resort in Spain.

How I use Twitter 

As soon as I switch on my computer each day, I check my Twitter account for mentions, retweets and new followers. Then, I take a look at the latest posts after I’ve finished certain chunks of work.  It gives me a five to ten minute break every so often. It’s a mental getting up from your desk and stretching your legs. When you’re working in such an isolated way it’s good to know there are other folk out there.

Why Twitter and not Facebook?

I’m not so keen on Facebook and I guess I might walk away from that sooner or later. I’m there because I feel that I should be. It constantly confuses me. At least Twitter is easy to follow. Even when they change it, it’s easy to get used to the new format. I love how it is organic – even if that can be funny at times.  I mentioned the word SEO recently and suddenly had all these bright young things approaching me and my multiple identities trying to sell me search engine optimisation. (No guys, can’t afford it and that’s why I went on the course- to find out how to do it.) You can guess what happened when I blogged about a girl in my latest novel having a puncture.  But on the whole it works very well and I’m quite chuffed that the Wiener Library found me before I found them.

Follow Friday

I guess within this system, we all have our likes and dislikes. For instance, I’m not too keen on #ff  (people you think are worth following you mention on Fridays).  Everybody I follow is recommended- or – durh  - I wouldn’t be following them. And of course, all those people who follow me are very wise. So they’re worth a look. Of course, I’m really pleased when somebody mentions me. Every time I do it though I feel very bad about the people I’ve not mentioned. So, I tend to duck out of that one.

Sample Sunday

On the other hand, I find #SampleSunday underused. I seem to be one of the few that use it.  The idea is you put up a sample of your writing on a blog every Sunday and then past a link to that blog in a Tweet. I’ve had quite a few hits on the samples I’ve posted and I’ve certainly read others’ samples.

To promote or not to promote

Some say you should, some say you shouldn’t. Some say your tweeting should be 80% about other things, 20%  about self-promotion. I tend to agree with the latter. I tend to unfollow anyone who only self-promotes. However, I have one writing friend who only uses Twitter for self-promotion. She does it charmingly and her Tweets are a joy to read. Several of her books / stories are on my reading list now. In her case it’s working. And I will unashamedly promote other people’s work if I like it.

Tweets as headlines

I’m following over 1,000 tweeps. (people who use Twitter). I can’t possibly hope to read every single one and especially not all the links that people have included. You have to learn to read tweets a little like the way you read the newspaper: cherry-pick what really interests you.

Cheating on the 140 characters by including links?

This was a point made by someone new to Twitter – and I notice that this person is now putting links into her tweets. No, not really. Twitter is also an extremely fast way of letting people know you’ve said something in more detail. They can choose whether to read the whole or not. I often click through on to a link and then find it not so interesting after all. On the other hand, I also find I haven’t got time to read an interesting post. Well, in that case I’ve saved the link and read the post later.

Do as you would be done by

I’ve shuddered a little when I’ve heard some people say they only spend a few minutes a day on it. But they accept 500 or more followers, scatter their worldly wisdom in front of them in the form of two or three posts, expecting 1500 viewings, and aren’t prepared to listen to what their followers have to say? Is that fair? It’s really a matter of finding a way of keeping time spent reasonable but also not missing out on what could be important and / or interesting.  You actually stand more chance with 140 characters than you do on Facebook and various newsgroups and forums.

How I’ve benefitted

·         I’ve found out about competitions and calls for submission for me and my students

·         I’ve found out about the activities of other writers

·         I’ve put out my own calls for submission.

·         I’ve found out about other books and events

·         I’ve told people about my books and events

·         I’ve laughed, joked and commiserated with friends

·         I’ve got news out real fast

·         I’ve found out news real fast

·         I’ve made lots of new friends

·         I’ve learnt to get my message across in 140 characters

·         I’ve had a good giggle

·         I’ve communicated to Richard Branson, Stephen Fry, Paul McCartney, Stella McCartney and one or two others. (Of course, I have no idea whether they’ve ever read my message, but that would also be true if I’d communicated with them any other way except face to face. At least this way there is a chance.)   

·         I’ve read some really good tweet-length stories     

·         I’ve shown my approval of others’ words very quickly and easily: I’ve retweeted them.    

A real joy

Yes, indeed. Twitter is a real joy to me. For me personally it’s the best the Net has brought yet. It even improves other platforms by the way it interacts with them. So, here’s to more tweeting.       

Master class with Melvyn Burgess, Catherine Pellegrino and Shannon Park

This excellent class was offered last Saturday by Commonword, Manchester. It was by invite only and I felt privileged to be invited. We were quite a small group and so there was plenty of opportunity to ask questions.

Over the years, I’ve attended hundreds of workshops, many of them facilitated by well-known people in the writing industry. But I still learnt something last Saturday.

I’m not going to give you all of the detail – much of what I could say would repeat what is contained in the very detailed blogs kindly posted by those who were able to attend the SCBWI-BI  Conference in Winchester last week. I’m just going to go through what for me – an already published but not yet best-selling author – were the highlights.  

The most important points for me from author Melvin Burgess were:

·         The difference between an amateur and professional is about 10,000 hours. Write, write and keep on writing if you want to be published. (I keep totting up my hours and I keep getting a different figure- I never was all that good at maths!)  

·         Ultimately, you learn to be your own best editor – but don’t always start at the beginning as one then tends to rush the end. I’ve put that into practice already this week!

·         Be a little cautious about seeking the opinions of others until you are satisfied with the work yourself. Maybe the questions you need to ask are “Where doesn’t it work?” “Where are you bored?” (I’ll add in here that I also find it useful to get people to tell you what they’ve understood about your characters – have they come out the way you intended them to?)

Agent Catherine Pellegrino assured us that it is all right to submit to more than one agent at once “otherwise you’ll be waiting forever” though there may come a point when an agent wants to read exclusively the whole of a manuscript. This is only fair and other agents would understand this. So, shortly I’ll be sending out a little more vigorously two novels that are doing the rounds.

She advised to mention if we had worked with such organisations as Cornerstones and emphasized that this is a good example of that type of body.  They are expensive and writers should be proactive enough to make sure that they do get their money’s worth.

She emphasized that humour and great voices are important to her.

We were very fortunate in also having commissioning editor Shannon Park with us. She works for Puffin, which is, as she says, the number one children’s publisher. She gave us the usual depressing news about how publishers are taking on fewer but “bigger” books and how all revolves around sales. She highlighted some of the trends.  “But of course,” she said, “it changes all the time.”  I’m always a little wary of this – what is trending now won’t be any more by the time you’ve finished writing. Also, I can only write what I feel confident I can write well. However, sometimes things can be reshaped a little to fit a trend, so it is still worth knowing.

Her most useful tip is to imagine what you would say to the concerned adult wondering whether they should buy the book or not.  I’m quite used to the two-line summary I put at the beginning of the query letter. But what Shannon meant is shorter than an elevator pitch. Perhaps Twitter is good training. Maybe all those tweets have been useful after all! And she also mentioned humour.

It was a really enjoyable and useful day. All of the writers there were to some extent experienced. It was good to be amongst like-minded people. We had a lovely lunch courtesy of  Prêt à Manger and Commonword.  It’s the first time for a while that I’ve some away from such a meeting feeling optimistic.  

Writing characters = becoming characters?

I wrote recently about how we become totally absorbed in the worlds we create. Do we become such parts of those worlds because we actually become the characters we create who live there.   

Is writing character a little like being an actor?

Both the writer and the actor have to realise that the character is there for a lifetime, not just for the brief time they are on stage or between the pages of a book. They have a back story and a potential future and when we are not reading or writing about them, or showing a theatre audience what they are doing, they still exist and continue to live their lives.

We empathize with our characters and in portraying them correctly, we create empathy in their readers / observers.

In the last couple of days I’ve had to be a father explaining a rather unfathomable divorce to his daughter and I’ve had to be the same daughter not wanting to tell this very father that she has changed and can no longer live with him.

Is it possible that we become even more absorbed in the characters we write about than those that we read about?  Or does the character we’ve created with such care, gain empathy form the reader because of the empathy we’ve employed in creating it? Can our characters actually become rounded and believable unless we put the effort into getting to know them properly?