Hoy, Boy.

Good morning, Readers! Picture Image by Gundula Vogel from Pixabay Same kitty. Same.

I meant to write this Sunday night, but ended up so down on life that I resorted to watching a sappy movie to make myself cry and (weirdly) simultaneously cheer myself up. It was Ever After: A Cinderella Story, incidentally. It's the only romantic movie I like; certainly the only Cinderella story I can stomach. Anyway, I was feeling so down about life and everything, I didn't get anything done.

Good thing I waited, because BlueSky delivered something I think really does deserve to be talked about. Picture I cropped out the name on purpose. I don't want to invite a dogpile (granted, I doubt this will reach anyone except my regular readers and not one of you are likely to start a horror-show).

I think this post really misses the damned point. Yes, writers have always griped about it being difficult to make a living as a writer. That's because it has always been difficult to make a living as a writer. However, it has been getting more and more difficult; locking so many people and their incredible work out of the market.
Let's just take pay, for example. Just the pay.

In Little Women, Jo March earns $100.00 for a short story. That seems about right. It's roughly the same today, in many markets. But that was $100.00 in the 1860s. Do you know what that would in today's earning power? Let me enlighten you: 

$3 738.87

Read that again. That's just about three whole month's rent for me. THREE MONTH'S RENT for a short story.
Let's not go into how expensive housing is in today's age. Jo March could've rented a four bedroom place for 22-ish months from what she earnt from that story.

Today, we're lucky to get $100.00 for a short story. The purchasing power for our work has reduced by 97% or so. Often, we're paid by the word, if we're paid at all. 2 cents is roughly average, but it can go as high as 5. If you are famous, you'll earn as much as 10 cents a word. Now that's living the dream.

Jo March is also given an advance of $300.00 for her novel.

That's $11 216.60 today. That's not even a down-payment for a home today. In 1860, a quarter of that is a whole-arse house. 

Most authors get nothing.

To make up for this shortfall, most writers in today's day and age work full time at a job that isn't their writing. In my case, I work three. This is in addition to writing. So... four, really.

Can there be any wonder writers are nowhere near as prolific as we used to be? All of our energy is spent just trying to stay alive. We can maybe snatch an hour a day or every other day in order to get our stories out.
Imagine how many books I could write in a year if I was able to sit down for a solid four hour block and write every day. SO many!

And it's not like I don't have the ideas (some are better than others, granted). I do. What I lack is time. What I lack is energy. Everything, everything is going to not drowning in this hell-scape world we've built.

Not only are we working one or more jobs that isn't writing, most writers also receive little marketing support from their publishers (sometimes the publishers are small and just don't have the resources, sometimes publishers are large but greedy and just don't want to make that investment in their writers), and so we are responsible for trying to make their publication a success. It's hard, time-consuming work. And we're expected to do it all.

And you want us to churn out three or more books a year?

Oh, and listening to writers mention this when directly asked is boring. We should be doing MORE with all that time and energy we clearly have. We lazy writers.

Alright, it got under my skin a little bit, but I genuinely believe that writers put a lot of good in the world (and some drivel, to be fair). Our work has value. We deserve to be paid fairly for that value. We deserve to be able to make a life for ourselves with that value.

Sometimes, a little complaining is warranted, you know?

Anyway, pay writers. And maybe we'll have some time and energy to write more for you.
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Published on March 20, 2024 05:00
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