Two claims / discussions in #BookTwitter converged in my mind recently.
1. ‘Copyright has to be truncated so authors are forced to create more work, instead of resting on their past achievements.’
2. ‘If authors (commercial or self-published) want go get ahead or even get noticed, they must write quickly and to-trend.’
First, on author-copyright.
Do y’all non-writers know how hard it is to get money in fiction writing? If you took the high-earners out of the mix, most authors earn far below the poverty level.
For commercially-published writers, their advances are often in the USD $4000-$9000 range, often split into multiple payments over time. And it can take *more years*, if ever, to ‘earn out’ that advance so they can receive actual royalties on later sold work.
There are self-published authors who earn over USD $100,000 per year. Most self-pub authors on Amazon, according to multiple studies I’ve seen over the last decade, earn less than USD $1000 a year. Many far less than that.
I, for example, self-published some fiction over the last few years. I don’t write fast. I *legendarily* don’t write fast.
I also put no money into marketing. I took myself off most fiction marketing groups when I left Facebook and Instagram. (Also, when I realized the duplicity and clique-ish harassment embedded within many of those groups, but that’s another post).
The last year I was entirely published (2019) by a small-press, I earned USD $25.47. For the whole year, spread over three books. Last year’s self-pub earnings for six books was around $20.
I would have to sell 750 books a month, to earn what manufacturing pays me!
Authors don’t get benefits. No retirement funds. Health insurance and health care is always a problem, not even patched up by GoFundMe campaigns and writers’ association fund drives.
When authors get older and /or sicker, they need their earnings more. See this played out in the case of Alan Dean Foster and Disney.
Then there are ‘long tail’ earnings, where an author can earn respectable amounts off work first written and published years before.
The current copyright system has been perverted not so much by small-time authors somehow ‘cheating’ newer creators, but by big business seeking to keep their lucrative intellectual properties.
Museums can hold image rights to paintings and artifacts in their collections (often hundreds to thousands of years old). I understand museums wanting to monetize everything they can. In many cases the online rights-use fees can be so steep to discourage most applicants.
There’s a 1500 AD-ish Dutch painting of a woman who could be my doppelganger, but I can’t show you because the museum which currently holds her portrait (in storage, not public display) wants $150 a year just for noncommercial online posting on blogs.
Even though this painting has been published *in print* for decades, which is how I found my doppelganger in the late 1990’s, in the swanky private library of a Phoenix art manufacturing company.
The Disney Corporation is probably the worst large offender, lobbying multiple times to extend copyright on early & still lucrative cornerstones of its empire. While allegedly under or non-paying content creators *for decades*.
But Disney is not the only problematic publisher/packager.
Point #1 comes down to this:
Content creators need to be paid *during their lifetimes* for the hard work they’ve done. Maybe their direct heirs deserve some of those earnings. But not generations down the line. Certainly not long after the initial work should have gone out of copyright!
***
Point #2: ‘Always write to trend! Chase what’s hot in publishing niches, exhaustively study keywords and SEO to maximize your earnings! Write fast: if you aren’t churning out a novel every three months, your readers will chase another author!’
Look, some authors can do that, and produce consistently readable work.
Many can’t.
Many game the system, especially in self-publishing, by hiring ghostwriters or outright plagiarizing other authors’ works.
Many harness themselves into self-serving author cliques, marketing each others’ works to the same insular audience. (But again, that merits its own post.)
In an environment where grabbing eyeballs, read-throughs, and royalties are the *only* metrics of validation, actual book quality can easily become a side-effect or happy accident.
I’ve been writing for thirty-five years. I’ve seen a lot of trends rise and fall. Some authors get lucky by having a finished and developed property *ready* when they or a literary agent spots an emerging trend.
A few more manage to cash in while the trend is hot.
A lot more will struggle, left in the sand as that tide pulls away.
Not long ago, I saw a very perceptive POC writer ask on Twitter: [paraphrased] ‘Why is it mostly white agents and editors who declare a trend dead after white authors have exhausted it? And never leave any room for writers from different backgrounds?’
Another lamented that POC, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA authors are only given credence and encouragement when they write to their *mainstream perceived* backgrounds and core cultural issues. Whatever those are.
Which are both largely and sadly true accusations in this business.
At its core, publishing for profit has to be a business.
Who will pay to read a book?
Commercial publishing and literary agencies need to understand that readers from marginalized groups *have money*. They are begging for representation in fiction.
I’m seeing more of this online, thankfully, and it’s a win for all of us. No matter who we are. We all benefit from richer tapestries of culture and experience.
I applaud authors who make money from their writing.
Also, the lonely sloggers who keep at it while getting no-reply rejections on full-manuscript requests.
Or the midlist authors of yesteryear who are clawing back a profit on private reissues of works long out of print.
And the folks like me, who stepped away from the profit game to recollect our sanity, and decided (at least for now) that we like our writing more when it’s not a punishing heartache.
Effective agents themselves have given us the clue: ‘Write to your passions, and make us feel them.’
I let my art experiences guide my writing habits now. I do my best work, my show-ready and museum-worthy pieces, when I’m not creating to a deadline or a flashy trend. When I dare to take chances.
Right now, that is funded by my day job.
***
Coda: I feel terrible for newly-querying authors right now.
In mid-2022, the English-language commercial publishing industry is undergoing the same Great Resignation. Junior agents and publishing staff have realized they are dealing with an already-high workload while covering for their less technically-savvy elders, while having *no realistic chance* at career advancement for another ten to fifteen years.
So they are leaving the industry for better opportunities.
In some cases, they’re trying to match existing clients with new representation. In many cases, not…leaving authors scrambling to get submission lists and find new representation.
There will still be authors signed with agencies, and books sold to publishers.
But it’s going to be a lot harder for a lot of people, and I feel for all of you.