UK author income survey raises questions

[fjtorres]

From Futurebook:
http://www.futurebook.net/content/uk...hing-bombshell

The key survey revelations commissioned by the UK's Authors' Licensing & Collection Society (ALCS) -- with full details to come in the autumn -- can be expected to ratchet up an already acute sense of tension between the US-UK creative corps and the corporate entities that publish it.

And while it's easy to criticise a base of authors squabbling amongst themselves as their leadership explores the potential for labour organisation -- just two days ago, the growingly influential Hugh Howey asked Do Writers Need a Union? -- a look at the ALCS figures being debated at the House of Commons this evening in Westminster should wipe the smirk off the face of anyone who wants us to believe he or she cares about literature and its artists.

Here, in professionally gathered and analyzed clarity, is what a fast-rising force of newly empowered authors will be quick to slam as the shameful gap between the publishing industry's avowed reverence for fine writing and its willingness to pay a living wage for it.

As we hear in first comments from the Society of Authors' Nicola Solomon to The Bookseller, we are coming face-to-face with a remarkable contradiction in concepts of corporate responsibility. Here is an industry which, as Solomon puts it, knows authors to be "100% necessary to the process" -- and yet, many will say, views those authors as not worth the job security provided to day labourers and nannies.

More at the source.

Regardless of the accuracy of the survey, which won't be clear until the fall, it is notable that (for a change) corporate publishing is getting questioned.

[fjtorres]

As a follow-up, the society of authors is publicly decrying traditional publishing contracts as "neither fair nor sustainable".
Via the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...ety-of-authors

Nicola Solomon, who heads the 9,000-member strong Society of Authors, said that publishers, retailers and agents are all now taking a larger slice of the profit when a book is sold, and that while "authors' earnings are going down generally, those of publishers are increasing".

"Authors need fair remuneration if they are to keep writing and producing quality work," she said. "Publisher profits are holding up and, broadly, so are total book sales if you include ebooks but authors are receiving less per book and less overall due mainly to the fact that they are only paid a small percentage of publishers' net receipts on ebooks and because large advances have gone except for a handful of celebrity authors."

On top of that, said Solomon, "publishers are doing less for what they get. There are still important things they do – a traditional publisher can edit, copy edit, design, market, promote, make your book better, deal with foreign sales. With ebooks, though, publishers' costs are less, so authors should get a better share. They do not have to produce, distribute or warehouse physical copies. Even on traditional books, publishers' production costs have gone down but authors have not benefited from these costs savings. And, increasingly authors are being asked to do a lot of marketing and promotion themselves."

More at the source.