Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal August 2006 Volume 4(4)

Endpiece

What is an author worth?

I am all too well aware that bookfunds are in a very unhealthy state in many areas but it still seems to me now, as it seemed to me when I was working as a public librarian, that Scotland’s libraries have a clear practical and moral duty to support the full range of Scottish writing and publishing.

Writers are not, as a general rule, richly rewarded for their work. Yes, there are headline-grabbing stories about the likes of J. K. Rowling, Alexander McCall Smith and Ian Rankin earning substantial royalties – and good luck to them say I! Most writers (including your present correspondent) do not operate in that league and on average members of the Society of Authors earn an embarrassingly small amount from the exercise of their profession.

Now it is true, as I tell myself every time a royalty statement arrives, that nobody forced me to become a writer and that I am doing what I want to do and what I enjoy doing, but still I wouldn’t turn down a slightly fatter cheque.

The non-authors among you are probably unaware of the rather peculiar economics of the publishing world. When you go into your local Waterstones or Ottakars and see the “3 for 2” offers piled high on the front of shop table you may think – “Ah hah! X is doing well – her books are selling, the royalties are piling up.” Well, yes, up to a point.

A typical publishing contract will offer the author royalties of say 8% of the cover price of a trade paperback – which for simplicity’s sake we will say has a price of GBP10. So for every copy sold our author gets GBP0.80. However, and there is always a however, this rate applies only to books sold at normal discount rates (typically up to 45%). I hate to disillusion those of you who believed in both the tooth fairy and the altruism of booksellers but the “3 for 2” offer is not an amazingly generous gesture by the bookseller. It is a promotion funded by all the parties to the deal – the bookseller will have charged the publisher a fee for inclusion and will have extracted a higher discount – at least 55%. At that level of discount the author will find that a nasty little contractual clause kicks in which says that for high discount sales the royalty rate will be 10% of publisher’s net receipts. Take off 55% discount from the £10 cover price and the publisher’s net receipts are GBP4.50 – actually it will be less because of warehousing costs – perhaps another 10 or 12% off the invoiced value – so let us say the publisher gets GBP4.00. The lucky author being “promoted” will thus not get GBP0.80 for each copy sold in a “3 for 2” but GBP0.40 – and had better just hope that increased sales will be sufficiently good to make up for the drop in per volume income.

One means whereby Scottish authors supplement their income from sales is through Live Literature Scotland (LLS) – what used to be known as Writers in Public/Writers in Schools. An excellent scheme, which brings writers to schools, libraries and other organisations with the fee being split between the local organisation and Book Trust Scotland. However (yes, it’s that word again) there are problems – and one that I have been concerned with over the last year as Secretary of the Society of Authors in Scotland has been the rate for the job. The fee has been stuck for about eight years at GBP100 for up to a half-day engagement and the Society has felt, rightly, that as everyone else concerned has seen some sort of increase in income in that time, it was only right that the author, who underpins the whole book chain, should get a fairer return. The LLS fee has become the benchmark in Scotland and other bodies such as the Edinburgh Book Festival tie their fees to it.

We have been pressing Scottish Book Trust and its paymaster the Scottish Arts Council for an increase and, although nothing has happened so far, the signs look promising for financial year 2007/08. “Live old horse, and you’ll get corn” as my grandmother was given to saying.

Our anxiety to get the LLS fee raised was increased when we found that the Arts Council of England recommended fee was GBP250 for a half day, and, no, I’m not too clear why a half-day visit to a school in Carlisle pays two and a half times better than one to a Dumfries school! Obviously when the LLS fee goes up this will have implications for schools and libraries who will have to find their share of the increase, but I am sure that local organisations will recognise the justice of the case and the need to pay a fair reward to visiting authors.

Brian D Osborne

Information Scotland Vol. 4(4) August 2006

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