Authors Guild Survey Shows Drastic 42 Percent Decline in Authors Earnings in Last Decade

The Authors Guild’s 2018 Author Income Survey, the largest survey of
writing-related earnings by American authors ever conducted finds
incomes falling to historic lows to a median of $6,080 in 2017, down 42
percent from 2009.

The Authors Guild surveyed its membership and the members of 14 other
writers organizations in 2018, receiving detailed responses from 5,067
authors. This included traditionally, hybrid and self-published authors
who have commercially published one or more books. When discussing
median incomes, the survey looked at both full-time and part-time
authors.

The respondents reported a median author income of $6,080, continuing a
sharp decline over the last decade: $8,000 in 2014 and $10,500 in 2009
(per the Authors Guild’s 2015 Survey), down again from $12,850 in 2007,
as reported in a joint Authors Guild/PEN survey.

Earnings from book income alone fell even more, declining 21 percent to
$3,100 in 2017 from $3,900 in 2013 and just over 50 percent from 2009’s
median book earnings of $6,250.

The survey showed a shift in book earnings to other writing-related
activities, such as speaking engagements, book reviewing or teaching.
Including those sources, respondents who identified themselves as full-time
book authors still only earned a median income of $20,300, well below
the federal poverty line for a family of three or more. To access the
full results and data, please
click here.

“When you impoverish a nation’s authors, you impoverish its readers,”
said James Gleick, the Authors Guild’s president. He noted that more
books are being published than ever, but that books of quality often
demand time and research that can’t be sustained if an author also needs
to teach and lecture to make ends meet.

The drop appears to affect almost all categories of authorship, with writers
of literary fiction experiencing the biggest recent decline in book
earnings: 43 percent since 2013. This raises serious concerns about
the future of American literature—books that not only teach, inspire and
elicit empathy in readers, but help define who Americans are and how the
U.S. is perceived by the world.

The only exception came among self-published authors, who saw
book-related income almost double since 2013. Despite this uptick,
self-published income levels remain 58 percent lower than traditionally
published authors.

The Causes
Among the factors contributing to the pressure on
authorship, the Guild cited the growing dominance of Amazon over the
marketplace, forcing publishers to accept narrower margins and passing
those losses onto authors through lower advances and royalties,
including the extremely low royalties paid on the increasing number of
deeply discounted sales and the 25 percent of net ebook royalty.

In addition, many electronic uses, such as classroom course packs,
Google Books and Open Library, are now made on a royalty-free basis
arguing fair use, whereas royalties traditionally were paid for
comparable analog uses.

Increased competition from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program adds to the
equation, as do the massive number of books sold cheaply as new by
Amazon resellers right alongside the publisher’s copies, often even
claiming the buy box.

Amazon controls approximately 85% of the self-published market and so
most self-published authors have no options other than to accept
Amazon’s non-negotiable terms.

“Amazon, but also Google, Facebook and every other company getting into
the content business, devalue what we produce to lower their costs for
content distribution, and then take an unfair share of the profits from
what remains for delivering that reduced product. We get that they like
to move fast and break things, but it’s no longer in their own interest
to break us. If even the most talented of authors can no longer afford
to write, to create, who’s going to provide the content?” asked Authors
Guild vice president Richard Russo.

What Can Be Done?

• Publishers and self-published authors should be able to negotiate
  collectively with Amazon, Google and Facebook to equalize the
  bargaining power. Congress should enact an exemption to antitrust law
  to permit it.
• Royalties should be paid by resellers to authors for resellers’ sales
  of new books.
• U.S. should establish a federally funded equivalent of a public
  lending right to provide authors a benefit from the public use of
  books; and libraries should be better funded.
• Publishers should pay higher royalties on ebooks and deeply discounted
  books; and they should destroy all bookstore returns to prevent them
  from getting into the secondary market.

The following writers organizations and publishing platforms
participated in the survey: Authors Guild, Romance Writers of America,
Society of Children’s Book Writers, Sisters in Crime, International
Thriller Writers, Textbook and Academic Authors Association, National
Association of Science Writers, American Society of Journalists and
Authors, Association for Garden Communicators, Independent Book
Publishers Association, PEN American Center, Authors Alliance, Next Big
Writer, B&N Press, Authors Registry, IngramSpark, Reedsy and Lulu.

About the Authors Guild
The Authors Guild is the nation’s
oldest and largest professional organization for writers. Its mission is
to empower working writers by advocating for the rights of authors and
journalists. The Guild protects free speech and authors’ copyrights,
fights for fair contracts and a living wage and provides an engaged and
welcoming community for all published authors. For more, visit www.authorsguild.org.

[1] Book-related income is based on royalties, advances, ebook
subscriptions contracts, subsidiary and international rights, audio and
film rights, reprints, distribution rights and earnings from book awards
or prizes. Writing-related income refers to 18 types of jobs that rely
on professional skills published book authors possess to earn income
beyond book sales, such as speaking engagements, teaching creative
writing, freelance journalism, editing and ghostwriting. Author-related
income is the combination of both these two amounts.

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