Authors Electric

  There was another burst of indignant publicity this month about how little authors are paid. The figure of £7,000 a year has been put forward as our median annual earnings, following a survey by ALCS, a brilliant organisation that collects money on behalf of writers.   I fear that the figure, however, while useful for giving the story a media-friendly hook, doesn’t really mean much. In the age of self-publishing, I would posit that a large percentage of the books earn their authors nothing. Just like the vast majority of paintings and the vast majority of music.   That is not a reflection on self-publishing, which I genuinely believe to be a giant leap forward for civilisation, because I would suggest that a similarly large percentage of traditionally published books have also earned their authors virtually nothing, despite having taken many hours, months or even years to write. I have certainly had first-hand experience of writing books that earn nothing, as well a...

This year I decided to stay home and follow the London Book Fair on Twitter. I can’t remember when I first attended the show. It could be as long as thirty years ago. Then it seemed impossibly daunting. So many thousands of books being promoted, none of them by me; so many people who all seemed to know each other well enough to air-kiss or hold intense meetings. I wandered the aisles downstairs among the publishers for hours and then bluffed my way past the guards upstairs to wander among the agents as they haggled over foreign rights, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Authors were not expected to attend in those days, so at least I had rarity on my side, but no one really wanted to talk to me either, fearful that I might pitch an idea or ask what had happened to my outstanding royalties. Once I became more established and had relationships with half a dozen agents and half a dozen publishers, the experience became less overwhelming. I actually had meet...