Ebooks Pinch Literary Authors

A Wall Street Journal article titled Authors Feel Pinch in Age of E-Books caught my eye. It covers the impact of the ebook revolution on the income and lifestyle of literary authors. The basic premise is that because ebooks sell for lower prices, publishers are offering literary writers lower advances. This, then, threatens the world of literary fiction because publishers are not able to offer fabulous advances to unknown literary writers, thereby allowing them to blossom and enlighten us with their wonderful prose.

I want to say at the outset here that I’m really, really, really trying hard to trim snark from the following. I respect literary writers for their craft. Ron Carlson, who I’ve met on numerous occasions, and whom Stephen King cited as one of America’s best writers, is really damned good. Dean Albarelli, who won a James Michener Award, used to run around with my brother and me when we all still wore short pants. While the types of stories they tell are not generally those I read for entertainment, there’s no denying that they know their craft, that they evoke emotions and do everything that is expected of them in the world of literary writing. Their stories are commentaries on the human condition and come with astute observations. I certainly learn from them and their work the way I do from other authors.

The Journal article, however, has a buried lede, and it takes doing some math to find it. Let’s start the detective work with this quote:

John Pipkin’s 2009’s debut novel, “Woodsburner,” won several literary prizes, including the 2009 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Despite the acclaim and print sales of more than 10,000, “Woodsburner” has only sold 359 digital copies.

Here’s the way the math works: Woodsburner retailed for $24.95 in hardback. Even though a trade paperback edition has come out, let’s assume the 10K mentioned above are all hardback sales. The book generated a minimum of $249,500 in sales, as far as royalties are concerned. Mr. Pipkin would earn $24,950, less $3742.50 paid to an agent, if he has one.

In the article, Mr. Pipkin goes on to say:

“Unless you’re a best-selling author, I don’t see how it’s possible for an author to get together enough income to pay for health insurance, retirement and other things,” he says.

This is a very good point. The median income for a family of four in the United States varies according to state, but hits somewhere around $70,000 a year. (It’s $66,400 in Mr. Pipkin’s state of Texas.) The poverty level calculated for the same family is $22,050. The royalties for Mr. Pipkin’s first book would put him right around that poverty level.

Fortunately for him:

Mr. Pipkin, who has Ph.D in English literature, says he cobbles together an income based in part on grants, fellowships and a partial advance he has received for his second book. “I’ve had to rethink my plans in terms of supporting my family full time as a writer,” he says.

His wife, a tenured professor, provides health benefits for his family. Mr. Pipkin, who teaches an undergraduate creative-writing class at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, receives no benefits. Although he has an IRA, he doesn’t receive employer contributions. Mr. Pipkin, 43, says his goal is to find a full-time teaching position with benefits.

To answer the question he posed above, the way a non-bestselling writer makes enough to pay for Health Insurance (over $7K a year and rising for me), pay for retirement (contributing to a SEP IRA with no “employer” contribution and paying self-employment tax (your SSI payment plus the employer half)) and “other things” (mortgage, food, clothing, utilities) is to work your ass off. This is not to suggest Mr. Pipkin is lazy, it’s to suggest he’s a bit disconnected from the real world. Like anyone running a small business, sometimes you have to do it and your day job until you have sufficient money in the bank to support yourself, your family and cover your costs for six to eighteen months. Only then do you think about going full-time freelance.

That, however, is not the buried lede. Literary fiction works often have very small print runs: 10,000 or fewer, and they don’t all sell-through (sell out the print run). You’ve seen the sort of royalties that 10,000 books generate, yet publishers have paid advances—sometimes into the six and seven figures—for these books, knowing the odds of their even earning out that advance is tiny. In fact, save for winning the Oprah Lottery, a better bet would be a slow Greyhound at the dog-track.

The buried lede is this: For years and years and years, literary fiction has been a losing proposition for publishers, and income from genre fiction has subsidized their spending on books that few folks read outside of college courses. In short, commercial fiction pays for literary fiction, despite literators despising commercial fiction. Now that economic realities have caught up with literary fiction, literary writers are facing the same life-choices that the rest of us have been handling for decades. It’s a bubble that’s bursting, the same way the techno-thriller, horror and cyberpunk bubbles burst. It’s the reality of the publishing economy that’s causing this economic disruption, not ebooks. As I’ve showed in previous posts, ebooks are actually more profitable for publishers than paper books. In the digital economy, publishers will profit more, though their cash flow will fall—a point I’m very surprised the Wall Street Journal, of all publications, has failed to recognize.

One further point: I know there are people who are afraid that without corporate welfare supporting literary authors, we will lose their voices. This is likely true, but this means the decision to support them is not a business decision. It is an emotional decision. It is a decision that runs counter to the evidence of spreadsheets. It is a decision to be a patron of the arts. I understand it, and even think it’s noble. If economic realities make such largesse no longer feasible, however, I understand why it goes by the wayside.

No author is owed a living. We’re not entitled to do what we’re doing and get supported because of it. It’s a business. If I can’t turn a profit at writing, the IRS will label my business a hobby and I won’t be able to deduct expenses. We all know it’s a business, and the object of business is to make a profit. If a writer can’t do that, then he needs to look for another job to support his hobby until he can make a profit at it. And there are lots of talented writers who have had to make that very decision—find a job until the economy picks up so they can go back to working as a writer full-time.

Heck, I track job offers all the time. I’m grateful that I have friends who own restaurants who might need a busboy. (I’d rather be a snooty wine-steward. I practice a diffident, upper crust accent for that job all the time.) I am very aware that if my work doesn’t entertain, if it doesn’t deliver what readers want, it’s time to move on.

This is why initiatives like my 10,000 Talion: Revenant ebook sales challenge are important. The marketplace is changing, and authors need to adapt. Right now we’re sold roughly 525 copies, or 5% of the goal. I know that amount will pick up as we head into the holiday season. Folks who get ebook readers will need to fill them with books, so why not Talion: Revenant? As readers spread the word about the challenge and more readers decide they want a sequel, we’ll get to the total. This is means that you all become patrons of the arts and that me, by managing my business resources, will have the money necessary to make the project work.

This simple fact is this: Vertically Integrated Publishing means that authors and readers can work together directly—with no middlemen running interference—to make sure we each get what we want. Readers get entertaining work at a lower price; authors get more money and the sort of immediate feedback that lets them shape their career according to reader input, not the best guess of an editorial board about what will be hot eighteen months down the line.

If an author’s getting pinched—literary or otherwise—it’s only because he’s letting himself get pinched.