The Economics of Being a Writer

This is also a problem for song writers. At a songwriters critique my area, when I sang a song that was from the perspective of a poor person, one of the songwriters said "Who wants to hear a song about poor people?" Clear Channel is obviously not interested in anything but boring mush for songs.

http://www.nappertime.com/george-r-r-martins-sister-the-economics-of-being-a-writer/

by Tim Napper
Oct. 30, 2014

It’s the perfect storm for the struggling writer: average author income is collapsing, social mobility is in decline across nearly all wealthy countries, and inequality is on the rise. These structural changes are leading to an inescapable reality: it is becoming harder and harder for poor, working class, and even the lower end of the middle class to break into writing. It is the great, unspoken threat to diversity and fairness in publishing.

A recent survey released by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) in the UK, entitled: ‘What are words worth now?’ provides compelling evidence on the decline of the economic wellbeing of the average writer.

It’s a depressing read: in the UK in 2005, 40% of authors earned their income solely from writing; by 2013 this had fallen to 11.5%. Between 2005 and 2013 there was a drop in income from professional authors, in real terms, of 29%. The median income of professional authors in the UK is now below that of the poverty line.

While e-books have been hailed as the new publishing frontier, a place for authors to recoup declining income, it has failed to make up for the dramatic falls in earnings overall for writers.

The ALCS report argues: “if unchecked, this rapid decline in the number of full-time writers could have serious implications for the breadth and quality of content that drives the economic success of our creative industries in the UK.”

This is not only true of the UK, but also for Australia, the US, and others. Social mobility has declined in the US since the late 1970s, and is now about equal with the UK (so much for the American Dream). Australia has far greater social mobility than both these countries, though is currently headed by a government that seems determined to bring about US-levels of inequality.



These economic realities are a huge challenge to both fairness and diversity for authors. Yet, while the debate on diversity and representation rages in the genre – in particularly in the US – almost no one is discussing the how economics of being an author silences the working class.

This aspect of diversity should be self-evident. In the US, for example, the working class and working poor make up 55% of the population. That’s a silent, almost invisible majority when it comes to genre fiction or indeed, the debate around diversity in the genre. This is bizarre when one considers that women are over-represented in the poor and working class, and people of colour and people living with a disability are significantly over-represented.

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However, it is both reasonable and worrying to note that those from backgrounds of financial and educational wealth have depressingly little to say on the question of class. The debate, most particularly in the US, fails spectacularly to discuss the issue of economic and educational privilege that rests on one’s social class. Sadly, classism is the one form of prejudice that is still normatively acceptable.

The looming, inescapable question for diversity in writing is this: in the future, who can afford to be an author?

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[The article discusses how this affects women writers even more]

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Thomas Piketty, in his best seller: Capital in the 21st Century, shows that levels of inequality are approaching that of over a hundred years ago in the US and parts of Europe. Vast amounts of wealth are accumulating to the one percent, the middle class is shrinking, and the plight of the working class and poor is becoming ever more entrenched.

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The implications of this growing inequity for the writing industry are this: in the future, you will need to either a have a wealthy patron, or already be wealthy if you wish to become a writer. Indeed, this is not merely a question for the future; it is the grim reality facing working class and poor writers now.

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In America today, for example, one’s ability to become an artist (including a writer) strongly correlates to the wealth of one’s parents (see graph, below). Statistically, artists will on average have wealthier parents than doctors. Think about that for a minute, think about the embodied privilege required to even become an artist. Writing is becoming an occupation only for the children of the wealthy.

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Australia, thankfully, retains a healthy tradition of genre writers from underprivileged economic circumstances. I was recently at a writer’s convention that had a panel of best-selling writers – Isobel Carmody, Kerri Arthur, and Russell Kirkpatrick – all from working class backgrounds. A situation that would never be replicated in the US.

Ask yourself this question: can you name three young US female speculative fiction writers from working poor or working class backgrounds? Can you name three of any gender?

For American writers around the age of around forty or younger, the names Nick Mamatas and Saladin Ahmed come to mind quickly, though not many after that. In my research I’ve yet to find a single younger female American writer from a working-class or poor background. That, for want of a better word, is depressing

Modern inequality, social immobility and an inability to talk about class means that at least half of the population are close to being locked out of the profession. They are the silent majority, a rare and disappearing breed, and their stories are not being told. While this endures, the breadth and perspectives of the fiction coming out of the genre will be diminished.