‘Only One Piece Of The Puzzle’

Subsequent to our report on the Authors Guild’s release of results from its 2015 Member Survey, I’ve invited the Guild to provide some interpretation of how it sees the release of its “The Wages of Writing” survey results.

In response, I have this explanation of the survey exercise, and I want to let you read it in full.

It comes to us from Mary Rasenberger, the Guild’s executive director, who writes:

Earlier this week, the Authors Guild released key findings from the 2015 Authors Guild Member Survey, which focused in part on authors’ earnings. The results, when compared those of our 2009 survey, show that writing-related income has dropped significantly in that time frame.

The survey has sparked lively conversation about the nature of authors’ livelihoods in the digital age. That’s one of the reasons we conducted it in the first place.

You may remember that about 14 months ago, we were working with another set of author-income survey reports, those from the UK’s Authors’ Licensing and Collection Society (ALCS), which reported these particulars, in part:

• In the UK, the 2013 professional authors’ typical annual income from writing was reported by the ALCS to be £11,000 ($18,800)
• That was down from £12,333 ($21,800) in 2005
• This put the 2013 income at £5,850 ($10,000) below the Minimum Income Standard of £16,850 ($28,878) set by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
• Only 11.5 percent of professional writers surveyed for ALCS said they earned their income solely from writing in 2013
• That was down sharply, from 40 percent of professional writers who said they earned their income solely from writing in 2005

You can read more about that set of survey results here, in my story at The FutureBook. There are rough parallels in what the Authors Guild study results are reflecting Stateside.

The overall impression is that in the US, as in the UK, many if not most professional writers, including book authors, cannot expect to earn a living wage from their writing. In many cases their writing-related income may be far short of that. This is obviously important information for those who work in the writing and publishing professions.

In the traditional publishing scenario, for example, virtually everyone engaged in producing a book—from the editor and cover designer to the publisher and marketing personnel—may well work in a salaried position with benefits.

The author, however, usually has no such job security or stable income. And, at least by default so far, our societies-at-large seem relatively oblivious to this. (In fact, it’s thought in some quarters that one reason so many people have been attracted to self-publishing is that they aren’t aware of how financially untenable a career track it may represent. The original intent of the AuthorEarnings series of quarterly reports is, in part, an attempt by its creators to build a case for the independent author’s potential to earn revenue as a writer.)

It’s not surprising, then, that organizations that advocate for the well-being of authors are concerned and want to publicize any indications they have of it is for many writers to earn a living.

Let’s turn to Rasenberger’s message now.

Getting To The Truth About Self-Selection

“There have been a couple statements reported in the press that we’d like to clarify,” writes Rasenberger in response to my request for comment, and I’m glad to give her a chance to make these clarifications.

First, she writes, by email to me:

It’s important to note that the survey was also sent to a smaller sample of non-members, as well as members. Some have argued that the fact that the survey largely reflects the experiences of self-selected Authors Guild members invalidates its results. But, every study that exists on author income is based on self-selecting responses. A truly representative survey of American authors would be cost-prohibitive, if not altogether impossible. (The difficulty lies in determining what the overall author population looks like demographically; Codex reports that there is no data on this or manageable way to obtain it.)

That’s Peter Hildick-Smith’s Codex Group she refers to, a company that specializes in book-audience/readership research.  Codex worked with the Guild on this newly released study.

And Rasenberger’s point on the self-selected survey is important and helpful. I’ve been as noisy as anyone about how limited we are when publishing survey work uses volunteers rather than the kind of purposely modeled sampling of respondents that’s usually required in “scientific” surveys. When respondents to a survey are volunteers, it’s hard for us to feel sure that their answers are straightforward and not impacted in some way by various factors of opinion and purpose.

Read more

There’s more: Read the full story at Thought Catalog

By Porter Ander­son
Follow @Porter_Anderson

Writing on the Ether:  Age, Surveys, And Income: The Authors Guild’s View

Originally published by Thought Catalog at www.ThoughtCatalog.com

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