Okay, yes. I am biased. I am a writer and I would like a paycheck. Should I apologize for that? I’ve heard this discussion before, not just with writers. I am trying to remember where. Was it ministers, reverends and church officials? Was it social workers? I just remember how the person who said it was horrified that they were *expected* to do something simply for the love of it.

Oh, yes. I remember. Caregivers, especially spouses or family. My husband should take care of me because he loves me. He shouldn’t ask for a paycheck. That’s what we were told. And it makes sense, right? He married me knowing I had something wrong physically. (I hadn’t been diagnosed yet.) He loves me. Why shouldn’t he take me to doc appts, help me with clothes, etc, etc for free?

I can see the reasoning. I can, seriously. We are writers and we love our jobs. We would feel the need to write even if we weren’t “in the biz”. We’d have stories and characters stomping through our heads and we would need to get them on paper to shut them up, right?

But we wouldn’t be obligated to share them. Can you imagine if Lora Leigh wrote the rest of her Breeds, but just put the manuscripts in the attic? Christine Feehan and her Carpathians? Eileen Wilks and her werewolf prince? R.A. Salvatore and all his dark elves? Am I the only one that would suffer physical pain from this horror?

There seems to be a few logical components most people miss.

People need to eat, wear clothes, see doctors, buy medicines, have homes… How can they meet those needs if all their time is spent working for love and nothing else?

Anyone else in caregiving agencies can be paid to take care of me. Any stranger. Not the one person I WANT to be comfortable and intimate with for the rest of my life. Well, now our economy/publishers/business people/government/copyright theives/con artists/whoever-makes-the-decisions-to-define-these-conditions want to limit who you read by making it impossible for a writer to live and create at the same time.

Therefore forcing a choice for the artist. Walden Pond or home and family? And a choice for the reader. Amateur on the internet giving it away for free or professional you pay for.

Is it true? Is the amateur writer just as good as the professional? Is their “free” information/story just as good as one that’s paid for? Is there really no reason to work so hard and eliminate errors, do our research, study our craft and have professional sites on the internet that we pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for?

I have a blog, a My Space, a Facebook, a Bebo, a Project Playlist, Living with Ataxia, I do interviews and post pictures… I tell my process, my accomplishments, my failures in an effort to have a personal connection with readers. In the hopes I can build friendships and a career. The days of writers hiding in the middle of a forest while our Mommy takes care of us and no one sees us ever…well, kiss kiss.

Writers are responsible for paying their bills. Lights, water, mortgage, internet, phone, cable, cell phone, blah, blah, blah. Then we must pay for bookmarks, business cards, posters, little gizmos for promo, computers, paper, pens, binders, post-it notes and tabs, books on writing, research and market reading. Movies and TV show DVDs for character arcs, realistic dialogue, modern pop references, understanding where our readers are at so our characters are real… Travel to conferences, writers organization dues, booksignings and contests and… The list truly never ends.

This is a business and more and more of it has been passed to the writers. It used to be that we could focus on writing and making the story our number one priority. The publisher did all the marketing and built the author’s career for both of their benefit. Then that was chipped away and we are now expected to be jacks-of-all-trades, masters of every one. Our time, already split between our career and our family, has divided again.

In order to make a living, we needed to do personal promo. Not only doing the promo, but learning more about marketing, branding and the logistics of business. Hours and hours to learn how to make book trailers, manage websites, learn and understand social networks like Twitter, Facebook and My Space and, on top of that, write blogs for free. Blogs to give a sample of our “voice” and our interests and free samples of our stories so readers can read and see if they want to invest in us at the bookstore.

Unless it’s the used bookstore. We get paid once for our work while even the government can tax it each time it’s sold!

And, tax is 8.1% right? At least here it is. Author’s make, on average, 8% of the cover price. Borders and B&N sell mainly at the cover price. So, the government makes .1% more on our books than we do. Then half that again at a used bookstore.

How does that work out? For a 6.99 book, an author makes .5592, the government .56619. Yep, that’s right. Rounded up, an author generally makes .56 per book while the government makes .57.

What about advances, you ask? Well, after the books are written and you’ve put in anywhere from two months to six years of writing, rewriting and revising with no income coming in, then you have a contract. Two to four months later, you will see the first check: 1/3 the advance. Used to be you’d get it all up front and even KEEP IT WITHOUT PAYING IT BACK, but no. Not anymore. Now you edit for the editor, do all the work for them you need to and when they approve it, you get another chunk.

Then, after the book is in print and you’re part of the job other than promo has been done for months, you can get the rest. THEN you will get absolutely nothing more until the publisher’s accountants add sales, returns, and whatever else, until 56 cents at a time, you earn out your advance. YOU PAY THEM BACK.

And then the government taxes your earnings. They make more than an author from the first sale, again more from the second sale when it’s used, then more when they tax the author for making an income.

So, we take our small chunks of advance and rarely expect to get more unless we’ve borrowed enough from our spouses, kids and household, to hit the promo hard. Assuming we invest in the right promo at the right time. And yes, when times are tight, it is a choice. Mortgage or computer to make deadline.

Authors, literally, must be paid just to break even. Paying bills after that is really a bonus and a sign of success. We don’t get regular weekly checks. We don’t get regular amounts. It’s like waiting for money to fall from the sky. How do you budget that?

So, here we are. Writing for free. Hours and hours of it for free. We’ll never see a single penny for some of those hours.

But, let me ask you, dear reader. How much do you like reading your favorite author? Do you think authors should be paid for their time and effort so they can live to write another day? Or would you rather be forced to quit reading them, to turn to fanfics and random websites because your favorite authors with the stories you like to read have to quit writing because part time at McDonald’s pays their bills better?

It’s one thing for authors to say Pay Us and be branded money-grubbing profiteers. But, considering the truth, that authors don’t all get rich quick, what if more than just the authors make the same demand? Pay the Writer, as Harlan Ellison says.

I’ll say it again because it bears repeating.

People need to eat, wear clothes, see doctors, buy medicines, have homes… How can they meet those needs if all their time is spent working for love and nothing else?

There are superstars in every business. People who make enough so they’ll not have to work for years if they decide not to. But not everyone is a superstar and no book or movie or band is produced based on the efforts of that one star. A larger percentage makes far less and has to make it work.

So, now, consider this. Some people think it’s totally fair to demand WE pay THEM for the PRIVELEGE of producing a book they’ll sell SOMEWHERE, but they won’t say where. They’ll take our time, take our efforts, take our talent and skill and dreams. They’ll take the money we borrow to pay them.

Then they AND the government can make MORE off our books than we do.

Welcome to Vanity Publishing. Aren’t we lucky such an innovative business model has been created just to rip poor, desperate-to-be-”published” writers off? What would we do without Harlequin, Random House and all the others who want to make money off of authors?

Does the garbage man get a paycheck? Firemen, cops, teachers, baristas, waitresses, caregivers, video game designers, computer specialists, architects, producers, directors, the movie ticket box office girl, teenage babysitters?

Hell, even prisoners get an hourly wage.

Why should writers be paid? Really?

Why shouldn’t writers be given the same courtesy, the same right to make a living wage as every other American? Why are they expected to work hours and hours for the love of it, go through the heartaches of mixed reviews and be completely transparent with their gifts and failures while their kids starve?

Yes, publishers take risks. They barely break even on most books while spending way too much on others. They aren’t getting super rich. I understand. But, you know what they and their employees do get?

Paychecks.

UPDATE: AFA the pay them back comment, here’s the deal. Is it just semantics? Is the publisher completely out the advance money they pay authors? It’s all in how you look at it. They pay the author advance money, but the author receives no royalties until the publisher has received it back in sales. If the book does not sell enough, the author does not have to pay back the advance. But in many cases, the advance is all the author will ever see. In many other cases, it is all the author will see for several years.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 6:38 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.