 The cheesed off look If you go through the mainstream system, your agent will sell your book to a publisher (or you may sell it direct). You get an advance of anticipated earnings on the books, then after that amount is ‘earned out’, you start getting royalties.
But apart from the ‘big cheese’ authors, most writers receive a fairly token advance, say £300, sometimes as much as £2-3000, sometimes none, just royalties. Of course, the publisher covers the cost of editing, book and cover design, production, distribution and some PR and marketing. The author receives around 7-10% of the book’s sale price.
You have to sell a lot of books to bring in even the minimum wage, let alone cover the hours you spent working at your desk or researching.
Indies pay upfront for cover and interior design, editing, formatting, proofreading, marketing services, advertising and promotion. Some of these can be done by the author if they have the appropriate skills. Once authors have published the books, they buy in print books for events and pay for their own launches, shipping and other expenses. Yes, they receive 65-70% of the book sale price, but that has to cover everything including admin and tax. Again, you have to sell a decent number of books to cover all that and make even a modest profit. Again, I’m not including the megastars here.
Well, most writers are realists; they accept being an author is not the road to riches. But it’s a bit depressing to read the ALCS latest survey
The key findings
- The median annual income of a professional author is £10,500, which is well below the minimum wage.
- The equivalent figure in 2013 was £11,000 and in 2005 it was £12,500.
- In real terms, taking inflation into account, this represents a fall in writing income of 42% since 2005, and 15% since 2013.
- Just 13.7% of authors earn their income solely from writing. In 2005 this was 40%.
- There is a growing gender pay gap, with the average earnings of female professional authors only around 75% of those of the average male professional author, down from 78% in 2005.
You can read the full report here:
https://wp.alcs.co.uk/app/uploads/2018/06/ALCS-Authors-earnings-2018.pdf
So why is author income so low and declining?
Well, there are 257 reasons being bandied about, but here are a few thoughts from me:
- There are an estimated 7 million books out there in print and ebook, let alone audiobooks
- Sadly, there is a lot of crap uploaded to the major retailers which puts readers off the whole business of reading
- There are now loads of different competing ways to spend precious leisure hours
- While some big houses put silly prices on ebooks (£14.94 I found recently!), there are a lot of ’99 pence/cents’ books for sale, some terrible, but some really good ones obliged by market forces to sell at that price but which shouldn’t sell themselves so cheaply
- 35% of 99 pence/cents is hardly steady income (30p to the author to cover all their costs and tax. Oh, please! 🙄 )
- Retailers’ lending schemes which can open the door to abuse – see my writing friend Jane Davis’s powerful exposé on this specific subject
- A culture of entitlement to a ‘free lunch’. Try asking for free in your favourite coffee shop or at Next or Marks& Spencer. I only give a free book away if you sign up to my newsletter – an exchange of value.
- Not attributing any value to culture. We have to sweat long hours to produce these books as well as try to contribute something to human knowledge and enlightenment
- PIRACY known also as theft. It is so NOT okay to download and make copies to distribute free to all and sundry, even if you are a book club. It’s not playing fair.
I love my readers; they enthuse about the worlds I create, they are loyal, honourable and happy people who like a ripping tale. I don’t sting them for my 90-100,000 word stories – the ebooks are generally £2.99/$3.99, the price of a latte/pair of tights/high quality chocolate bar. The paperbacks which weigh nearly half a kilo, or a pound (lb) in imperial, come in at £8.99/£9.99 (and look pretty).
But if people don’t buy books or borrow them from their library (which gives the author a small fee), many authors who would like to eat and pay the rent, will have to give up. And that would be terrible, wouldn’t it?
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO. CARINA, a novella, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories, are now available. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. NEXUS, an Aurelia Mitela novella, will be out on 12 September 2019.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines… Download ‘Welcome to Roma Nova’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be first to know about Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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 With critique writing partner Denise Barnes (Photo: Anna Belfrage) Spring and summer are the conference seasons and can sometimes create quite a hectic schedule; I’m on and off planes all the time with a few days in between. And then you squeeze a holiday in somewhere. The airports seem to blur together after a while…
But I was delighted to return to the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) conference earlier this month near Leeds where I was giving a talk with my critique writing partner Denise Barnes on, er, critique writing partners.
We’ve been in a critiquing partnership for nearly ten years and have distilled it down to ‘brutal love’. But along with the invaluable rewards of friendship and writing taken to the next level, there are dangers for the unwary…
(Download the handout!)
 Sam Missingham
Some of my favourite sessions were on discoverability/marketing from Sam Missingham who drew heavily on the acumen and flexibility of the indie sector to demonstrate marketing techniques, very detailed exposé on how to put put mystery into history from Nicola Cornick and Andrea Penrose and clever stuff about working with images from Janet Gover
Even when you think you know how to do these things, you still always learn something, get a new insight or are reminded about something you know have have since forgotten!
One of my pleasures and privileges was hosting a ‘kitchen party’ for the Independent Members who not only write but publish and market their own work.
 Standing L to R: RNA Chair Nicola Cornick, Anne Marie Doust, Anna Belfrage, Helen Hollick Cass Grafton, Clare Flynn, me, Freda Lightfoot. Sitting L to R: Anne Harvey, Lynda Dunwell, Carol Cooper The RNA was the first writers’ organisation that accepted me; their New Writers’ Scheme was my springboard. Yes, the Roma Nova books are thrillers, but they’d be poor honeys without the epic romances of Carina & Conrad or Aurelia & Miklós.
But what do you get out of these massive gatherings?
Information – about publishing, opportunities, writing life, marketing tips, writing craft
Inspiration – from those who are successful in critical or monetary terms, fulfilled or just having fun
Ideas – about new stories, new approaches, new collaborations
 With Charlotte Betts and Liz Harris  With Anita Chapman
I’d add a very important fourth – comradeship/friendship (delete as applicable, or not). You share experiences, meet fellow sufferers, celebrate with colleagues, discuss writing and publishing with people whose eyes don’t glaze over when you mention the ‘W’ word. And in our solitary creative life, that’s immensely valuable.
A few tips on speaking at conferences – the truth
How to get the best out of attending a conference
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO. CARINA, a novella, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories, are now available. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. NEXUS, an Aurelia Mitela novella, will be out on 12 September 2019.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines… Download ‘Welcome to Roma Nova’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be first to know about Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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 And breathe…! Or not.
Well, I’ve been having some difficulty doing this over the past fortnight. I flew home from the highly energising Dublin Writers’ Conference with a raging sore throat and feeling like a superannuated wet dishcloth. The tiredness could have been due to the conference (it was fairly intense), but the sore throat was no doubt due to a cold picked up there. But I’d be over it in a couple of days, wouldn’t I?
I had a load of projects in front of me, all neatly scheduled: the next conference talk, editing my Roma Nova short stories for a collection due out later in the summer, my monthly writing column for the local English language magazine, preparing a new box set of the second Roma Nova trilogy, running a couple of joint promotions with colleagues, running my own promotion for INSURRECTIO, preparing to pitch a new series to publishers, writing the June newsletter for my faithful followers, etc.
That all went completely out of the window as I raged with a temperature, overwhelming exhaustion, coughing fits from the depths of Tartarus and sneezing like a plague victim. I lost a kilo and a half in weight in three days. Oh, and did I mention the heatwave of 34C for the whole of the first week?
Now, I’m not looking for sympathy. Really. My overwhelming feeling was one of impotent anger, fuelled by the frustration of only being able to manage to totter to the bathroom and the urge of my body to pull me into sleep the whole time.
Writers have to work hard these days, not just writing: they run small businesses, market, promote, interact with other readers (a true pleasure!) and with other writers, they arrange talks, events, contribute to anthologies, write blogs and short stories as well as office admin and record keeping. We seem to think we have to be superhuman and for the most part we are – juggling and 60 hour weeks a speciality.
Then the germs strike…
Now, I can usually keep going on some level in the face of the sniffles, but this virus was a horror, one level down from flu. My favourite sweetie became a Strepsil, my best drink a Lemsip. You’ll realise how grim it was when I report that I went right off chocolate and my daily glass of red wine.
But I learned valuable lessons and ones that all writers can embrace:
- Germs will always do their thing – resistance is futile
- Accepting an illness will make you less angry and help you recover faster
- You can catch up on your reading
- When you start to recover, you can reschedule your work and at least do some small things which will lift your morale, but don’t rush in too quickly
- If you relapse, go back to bed and don’t feel guilty
- Grab any help that’s around
We have to give ourselves a break. If we were employed, we’d phone in sick, especially if we’re contagious. I’ve been able to catch up on 75% of my work by today lunchtime which I don’t think is too bad. I hope by working over the weekend, I’ll get to 95%. As self-employed writers, we have resilience and a strong work ethic, but we are human…
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO. CARINA, a novella, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories, are now available. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. NEXUS, an Aurelia Mitela novella, will be out on 12 September 2019.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines… Download ‘Welcome to Roma Nova’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be first to know about Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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It’s on grass in summer, it can take place indoors, it’s pacey, full of tension, heart-wrenching, breath snatching and an alternative to football… Yes, reading!
And not just reading, but box sets where you get three or more books packaged together. Not only is this convenient, it will also save you money. So let’s escape from the noise and kerfuffle of football and enter the wonderful world of box sets…
The Beatrice Stubbs Box Set – JJ Marsh
 
For lovers of intelligent crime fiction, this boxset by J J Marsh with three heart-racing European adventures is a must read.
Beatrice Stubbs of Scotland Yard: detective inspector, metaphor mixer and stubborn survivor. Battling crime by day and her own demons by night, the question is always the same: justice or law?
Behind Closed Doors sees Beatrice seconded to Switzerland. Wealthy, powerful men are committing suicide. Or are they? When the same DNA is found at each scene, DI Stubbs suspects someone is dispensing a personal retribution. Beneath the chocolate and charm, Zurich hides many secrets.
In Raw Material, Beatrice is divided. Hunting a sex offender on London Underground while trying to investigate illegal activity on a Welsh beach stretches her to her limits. Her partner and neighbour decide to assist. But amateur detectives and professional criminals make a bad mix.
Tread Softly. Time for a sabbatical. A gourmet trip to the north of Spain is exactly what DI Beatrice Stubbs needs. Until she meets an old acquaintance who lures her into an investigation. Beatrice is up to her neck in missing persons, murder, corruption and Rioja.
Across Oceans – Clare Flynn
  Uprooted from their homes and forced to face the challenges and struggles of adapting to a new world.
These three stand-alone full-length novels are from the acclaimed historical fiction author, Clare Flynn. Each novel will transport you across oceans and back in time.
A Greater World takes you to the beautiful Blue Mountains of Australia in the 1920s.
With Kurinji Flowers you travel to the tea plantations of Southern India in the 1930s and 40s – the last years of British colonial rule.
Letters from a Patchwork Quilt carries you to the ugly industrial north of Victorian England and to St Louis, Missouri.
None of the characters go where they have to go by choice, and all face life-changing challenges. Can love make the difference? Will it stand the course?
Second Chapter – Jane Davis
 If literary fiction is where you heart is,  Second Chapter by award-winning author Jane Davis is a collection of three thought-provoking novels where imaginative ideas are crafted into beautiful prose.
Says Jane, “Fiction is never going to provide a complete answer, but it does force both writer and reader to walk in another person’s shoes. And, in many ways, it is the exploration and not the answer that is important.”
Like Margaret Atwood, Davis conjures a fresh, new voice and style for every story, be it a man’s rediscovery of his mother through her photographs, the taboo of pupil/teacher relationships outside the classroom or a haunting tale of a young girl and her visions.
In I Stopped Time, there’s an estranged mother.
A Funeral for an Owl considers teenage runaways.
In These Fragile Things mother Elaine is obsessed by the child she lost, almost to the exclusion of the child she has.
A Time and Place –Triskele Box Set
If you are after a selection of genres, but want to read books that still take you somewhere new, the Triskele Box Set is for you.   A collection of seven wonderful novels with mystery, literary and historical fiction from Triskele Books is packaged together for your enjoyment.
The box set includes:
Crimson Shore by Gillian Hamer.
Rats by Jane Hicks.
Behind Closed Doors by JJ Marsh
Wolfsangel by Liza Perrat.
Delirium: The Rimbaud Delusion by Barbara Scott-Emmett.
The Rise of Zenobia by JD Smith.
Ghost Town by Catriona Troth.
  Liza Perrat writes excellent historical fiction. The Bone Angel Trilogy has three standalone French village stories spanning six hundred years. Three midwife-healer women all linked by the same bone angel talisman. Explore their tragedies and triumphs during the French Revolution (Spirit of Lost Angels), WW2 Nazi-occupied France (Wolfsangel) and the 1348 Black Plague (Blood Rose Angel).
Steeped in French history with vivid, resourceful characters, this trilogy transports us through the past, leaving us feeling that no matter what we are confronted with across time, the human spirit endures.
The Nordic Heart Box Set
  A new collection of novels from acclaimed writer Helena Halme – The Nordic Heart Series.
This was love. The stuff she’d read about in books since she was a teenager.
Peter is a British Navy Officer, in love with his career. Kaisa is a Finnish student, engaged to be married to someone else.
They meet under the sparkling chandeliers of the British Embassy in Helsinki.
All the four novels of this bittersweet love story between the Finnish student, Kaisa, and dashing British Navy Officer, Peter, are included in the collection.
- The English Heart: Can their love go the distance?
- The Faithful Heart: Is there a happy ever after?
- The Good Heart: Can they love again?
- The True Heart: Can love conquer all?
If you enjoy Nordic fiction, or like books by Jojo Moyes and Liane Moriarty, you’ll love this stylish romance series spanning ten years and three countries: Finland, Scotland and England.
And of course…
21st century Roma Nova – powered by the Roman mindset, ruled by women.
Praetorian Carina Mitela is courageous, fallible and sassy. She hefts a gladius or assault rifle as required. But can she defeat treachery, conspiracy and a dark nemesis and still keep an enduring love burning?
“My ancestors fought to hold this land sixteen hundred years ago. I’m not letting some throwback destroy it.”
Nearly a thousand pages of action adventure and alternative history thrills in three books with over 150 five star reviews on Amazon between them.
I hope these recommendations help you escape the World Cup. Leave those football fans to their ball games and dive into the wonderful and satisfying world of box set fiction instead!
Find us on Twitter: #bethere #bereading
 (Graphic courtesy of Helena Halme http://www.helenahalme.com) Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO. CARINA, a novella, is available now. Audiobooks are available for the first four of the series.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines… Get INCEPTIO, the series starter, FREE as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter
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 Back in Dublin! From arriving at the airport, riding into the city from the airport and stepping down from the bus in O’Connell Street, there was something rather familiar.
Once again, I’d been invited by Laurence O’Bryan who heads up the Books Go Social group to speak at this very friendly festival. Although I’m waving CARINA, my latest book, around, and did mention Roma Nova (thank you Catherine pullman for the prompt), my main subject was outline a skills audit for newer authors.
People have more skills than they think and they’re often transferable from their day job or a previous job. (More here: Do you have transferable skills for the business of being an author?)
You can see the full programme here, but some stand-out messages of the weekend were:
- have a terrific, genre specific cover
- have your manuscript professionally edited
- embrace marketing and hone business skills
- put yourself in the place of your reader and engage with them
- research your book world thoroughly
- research the publishing options open to you
 With David Gaughran and Susanne O’Leary But the joy of any conference is the people. Attendees and speakers came from Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, the US, Norway to my knowledge. I met up with longstanding friends, (Eliza Green, Wendy (H) Jones, Susanne O’Leary, Catherine Kullman, Pam Lecky), admired and chatted to indie icons like David Gaughran, and made many new friends like Alan Gibson and his colleague JoAnn from the US).
 With fellow Alliance of Independent Authors member Eliza Green  Laurence O’Bryan looking serious
Of course, the convivial atmosphere was enhanced by many chats in the bar!
A sincere thank you to Laurence and his team, especially Tanja and Elisabeth, for all their hand work before and during the conference. They were pleasant, practical and patient the whole weekend.
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO. CARINA, a novella, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories, are now available. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. NEXUS, an Aurelia Mitela novella, will be out on 12 September 2019.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines… Download ‘Welcome to Roma Nova’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be first to know about Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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