“Writing’s a mug’s game.” — Roland Camberton, Scamp
A couple of weeks ago I spent an afternoon with a bookseller friend, playing with Nielsen BookScan. If you don’t know what BookScan is, this is a database that compiles figures of book sales — point of sale data, to be more precise. You don’t hear many references to BookScan in literary criticism, probably for good reasons. But as the fundamentalists of the professionalisation of writing continue to spawn in the so-called independent scene, and as the scene becomes LinkedInfied, spending some time looking at hard data in BookScan is a revelatory experience. I was depressed but not surprised by how little my books sell but the actual revelation came when I also clocked how little so many of those who claim to be professional authors sell1. Once more, to make it clear: I’m talking about the independent scene, since there are writers who do lift banknotes by the shovelful, often churning out junk that makes the world a stupider place page after page, but that’s a discussion for another time.
As I have said before, there is a very strong cognitive dissonance coming from a lot of folk in indie publishing, who can’t decide what they are, and therefore alternate between the expectations that the taxpayer pay for their métier (through grants and so on) and that their writing be treated as a business. In other words, people who embrace the logic of the market but only when it suits them, which is at least incoherent. And surely if being a professional writer entails selling books (because it can’t mean just writing them, right?), then their scant sales mean they aren’t very good at what they do? I don’t necessarily believe this — I’m just taking this thinking to its logical conclusion. Writing can be a profession but for the vast majority of us — especially those moving in the world of independent publishing — it’ll never be one and it is damaging to everyone to pretend otherwise. Since I’ve been involved in the Anglo-American scene I have always been puzzled by how often people who should know better live in a La-la Land of both delusion and hypocrisy. Delusion, since many truly believe they have a chance at making a living selling two hundred of copies of books they’ll publish every four or five years; hypocrisy because that delusion is many times complemented by their being secretive about actual sources of income, which more often than not boil down to family money, a rent free existence, or a partner in full-time employment.
If we reduce writing to a business, and literature to its exchange value, then it becomes hard to argue against those BookScan figures, and we’d be opening a bag full of uncomfortable questions for independent authors. Why do we give any importance to these books that fail commercially? Why is the Arts Council throwing money at some of these writers? Is someone actually making money from books that don’t sell much and not telling us. Is it agents? Is it printers? It is publicists? Is it your local bookseller? Writers can’t be, because they are always complaining about the poor advances and royalties they get (for books that don’t sell well, once again). And indie publishers can’t be, since most of them depend on grants to keep running2. Bookselling — as my BookScan play-mate can testify — is very badly-paid too, unless you are Jeff Bezos. No one but Jeff Bezos is making any money, what a terrible investment these books! Of course I’m intentionally framing these questions in a misleading way. Because maybe it isn’t the logic of business that determines the worth of these books? Maybe we can demand good conditions for us as writers without having to pretend we are the CEO of a successful commercial operation?
I suspect the answer lies somewhere along these lines, perhaps. What I know for sure is that I’d love for so many of my peers in the independent scene to make their minds up. Either writing is a hard cold business, one in which the writer-as-worker produces commodities to satisfy the demands of a market; or writing is something that exists beyond its exchange value, something that can’t be equated to a business or a profession. It’s unlikely that your very professional accountant, solicitor, plumber, car seller, etc, will bag public money in order advance their profession. In most professions and businesses you can’t have the cake and eat it. For that, you have to be a banker. And bankers might make a lot of money but they are terrible writers. Mind you, they might be better than indie writers at selling books.
We are talking about figures in the low hundreds being very very common.
The “independent” label is hardly ever justified. Unless we mean independence from sales and profit, right?
Might apply for another grant. Got ten grand last time. I play it straight. I'm mad and poor, on disability benefits for schizoid delirium that renders me unfit for work. When I'm able, I write. My books aren't commercial and will never be best sellers. My writing is art, not popular entertainment. If I can squeeze a grant out of a wealthy charity, I will. I don't mind a hand out. I used to beg on the street. If someone's offering, I'll bite their hand off. I've stolen, robbed, and sold drugs to schoolkids, so I got no morals about getting paid. Anyhow will do. Writing don't equal getting paid to me. It's just something I do to use the images in my mind. A kind of magic. I'm a witch doctor invoking other worlds from another dimension. If I can share them with a few people and they say, "I like your stories!" well, that's cool. Other than that, I got to eat.