Rowling in it?

by Mary Hoffman
[Armadillo 7.1 Spring 2005]

I decided last summer to carry out a survey on the earnings of children's writers and illustrators and started with a pilot study in the Scattered Authors Society (SAS), which I reported on at our July retreat. I followed up the pilot survey of children's writers' earnings, with a modified questionnaire mailed to all members of The Society of Authors' Children's Writers and Illustrators Group (CWIG) group.

I had 127 replies by the deadline (out of a membership of 706) and the analysis has taken a while, but here are some of the results:

• 127 forms were completed, 30 of them by men.
• There were 8 illustrators, 12 writer/illustrators and the remainder (107) were writers.
• 86 had agents
• 85 had another earner in the house.
• Money made in 2003/4 ranged from £0 to £185,000, which gives a somewhat misleading average of £19,180.16. The average salary in publishing was £23,942,00 in 2004.
• The UK minimum wage is currently £8,827.00. 29% of our respondents earned £5,000 or under in 2003/4
• The UK average wage is currently £26,989.00 p.a. The average wage of a UK professional worker is £35,766.00. Only just over 17% of our respondents earned over £30 in the year 03/04.
• Entry level salaries in publishing (at ages 19-23) are currently £16,300.00 p.a.. Over 57% of our respondents earned £15,000 or less in 03/04.
• A Marketing Manager earns £28,101.00; a Publicity Director earns £37,750. Only just over 17% of our respondents earned more than £30,000.00 in 03/04.

(Source for all publishers' salaries: Bookseller 14.1.05)

• All the 6.84% who had earned £0 were women. Of the 85 with another earner in the home, 67 were women. Most who answered this question in the affirmative added øThank goodness!Ó
• Only 14 answered an unequivocal øNoÓ to the question øDo you usually earn out your advances?Ó
• The average first advance was £1,513.05 (bear in mind for some people their first advance was recent). Average latest advance was £4,813.16.
• Average smallest advance was £1,076.39, with a range from £0 to £6,000 (this last was also the only advance, for a first book in '04).
• Average largest advance was £8,337.81, with a range from £100 to £37,500.
• Of the 86 who had an agent, 17 said they did not negotiate better advances for them.
• In answer to the question, øDo you think the advances you get are fair?Ó 49 respondents said øNo,Ó 45 said øYes,Ó and the rest were ambivalent or didn't answer.
• The question about whether one could live off one's income as a children's writer/illustrator provoked several replies of the øyou've got to be joking!Ó variety. However, 49 people answered Yes. (Some of these had very modest earnings, including one respondent who had earned £4,330).
• øHave you ever done so?Ó brought another 15 Yeses, i.e 15 who used to make a living at it but no longer do so, included in the 78 who had answered øNo,Ó to the previous question. (Or No Way! Or who had another job or who answered more hopefully ønot yet.Ó)
• To the question about whether Harry Potter had been a good or bad development for children's writers, only 13 people said unequivocally øBad.Ó 58 respondents, the largest group of all, said it was both Good and Bad, the commonest complaint being that everyone thought children's writers were coining it. And people really HATE being asked if they are going to be øthe next J K RowlingÓ! (øIt wasn't funny the first time!Ó) Some people, such as writers of non-fiction or realistic fiction, felt the question was irrelevant.

The extra question respondents could have been asked produced the following:

Is there another way authors could be paid? What about a fixed fee per book for predicted sales and then a rising royalty?

Percentages should be higher especially on discounted sales. And should be the same for all.

Do you feel embarrassed asking for money at all? (Yes)

Do schools, festivals etc pressure you to do appearances for nothing? (Yes)

How does writing children's fiction compare to earnings in your previous jobs?

If you don't earn much, why do you write for kids? (Because I enjoy it make enough to pay for school fees and holidays).

Should publishers make contracts/royalty statements easier to understand? (Yes)

Will I keep on writing even if I earn no money? (Yes)

What is the hardest thing about writing? (The time and energy spent mailing to agents, publishers etc. and waiting for a reply).

Children's books are a creative export for Britain: there should be recognition of this and some investment in our artists and writers.

Are others asked to develop their work speculatively, without a development fee?

We need greater transparency about our finances; there is a great deal of deliberate obfuscation.

It is outrageous, with modern technology, that publishers should take 5 months to calculate and pay royalties.

Many agents focus only on their successful authors.

Authors must learn to øhustleÓ and often creative people are not comfortable with business.

Do you enjoy your job? (Yes, when I don't think of the money!)

How often should one agree to rewrite øat an editor's whimÓ unpaid?

I get about the same hourly rate as I pay my cleaner (non-fiction writer on flat fees).

Who gets marketing attention? Who decides? etc.

Are you happy with your agent? [There was a recent SoA survey on this]

How can I improve my income as an illustrator?

How do we get better publicity?

Do you thank God and Antonia Fraser for PLR? (Yes, we do!)

Should authors have a say in when their books are reprinted?

Have your advances increased to keep pace with inflation? (No!)

How much was your PLR?

On the subject of a campaign for higher advances (which is what prompted my survey) there were some interesting results. Those respondents who were writers of non-fiction, working for flat fees, found the question irrelevant; what they would really like is a campaign for them to receive royalties.

Those who do receive royalties would like them to be at a higher percentage rate. There was great support for the ørising royaltyÓ or øescalatorÓ, where the percentage increases after a certain number of sales.

There were also interesting ideas about a fixed sum per copy, less than which a book should not earn for its author however deeply discounted.

I'm not quite sure where to go next with these results, but I shall try to get some publicity for them and see what can be done to improve the lot of those of us who work in this odd profession.