Millennial Authors (And All Readers) Have A Nineties Idea Of What Being An Author Is.

I was really intrigued and provoked by this insightful article in The Guardian which I think only began to take the lid off the reality of life for authors in 2024. 

I think a huge amount of millennial disenchantment comes down to us having been indoctrinated with baby boomer ideas of what we should expect from our job and our income in terms of the wealth, housing and lifestyle we can expect. 

This is an outdated mindset frankly that was not often promoted but also surprisingly stubbornly defended by (particularly right leaning) members of the baby boomer generation. This article made me think how this issue extends to what people expect of novelists- and by extension what novelists expect of themselves. In many ways I have got to do events with- and interview heroes of mine- in a way I never could have expected. The touching feeling of someone writing or telling you of the impact your work has had on you is still incredible, as is the feeling when a box of your books arrives in the post. 

The first author quoted discusses how dispiriting it was for their novel to be met with such plaudits only for them to realise it won't get better than that. As a teenager I had dreams of my debut being a hugely successful blockbuster that instantly afforded me in my twenties Bret Easton Ellis 'Less Than Zero' style fame. Having spent days poring over books in Waterstones in Newcastle (and I distinctly remember working in a hospital, reading one during my break and thinking 'will I ever have the guts to write a novel?) it was incredible to walk in there one day and see a stack of my books on the shelf. 

Once I got over instant riches and fame not happening I now see how galling such instance success would have been. The piece says, 'part of the problem is the gap between the public perception of what it means to be a 'successful novelist' and what that means financially.' People have a 90's idea of novelists. The prestige is still there- I often tend not to mention being a novelist as the excitement and force of reaction it can elicit can be a lot to take- I try to help other writers but so many have deeply held ambitions tied up with the idea of being a writer. 

But the economics aren't what we widely assume they'll be. I bet you could fill a couple of lifts with the number of writers that can afford a wage, buying a house and a pension through their writing work alone. Will Self, who I interviewed, bought multiple houses and sent his children through private schools using his writing and journalism and public appearances. But a pension too? That publishing model with the huge advances of the 90's is gone, and the publishing industry took huge hits as a result of it. 

As an author you get to have your book in shops and taken to people's hearts but in reality you'll be finding ways to fund- in whatever institutions are a part of your life- the booze for your book launch, with books you probably paid to have sent to you. Like every other part of modern life the costs have gone through the roof and the expectation is you'll foot the bill and deal with the logistics. Short of being involved in the publication's production and distribution I have been way more hands on building press contacts, relationships with bloggers, a social media following and organising book launches than I thought I'd be. 

When some great organisation like new Writing North have given me an award (like they did for my novel An Honest Deceit) and organised a tour through which I was paid 150 pounds per event for generally full events it was the exception rather than the default. 

There are other ideas that people have that are no longer relevant. Positive newspaper reviews- even massive features- and many tweeting about your book, along with lots of coverage, don't necessarily translate into sales. A genuine buzz- in which reader communities are excited about your book and book bloggers play a role- will. Book chains like Gardeners picking up on your book is no guarantee of sales either. Whole publishers (like Darkstroke) use an Amazon only model and with authors pitch specifically to certain Amazon charts, trading off which ones will give them a number 1 charting novel (without as a chart looking too obscure) whilst ensuring this pushes the book up the algorithm on Amazon. 

Pre to my permanent academic job, whilst I lived off writing it was Arts Council research grants (to research a book in Russia), the New Writing North award, events, and the occasional adaptation of my book onto Audible that paid the bills. 

I made between 15,000 and 500 for various novels. Little of this was royalties, even when book sales were in the thousands. 

There was a most interesting quote in the article, 'She has begun a PhD in the hope of on day finding an academic job that will offer her a pension, sick pay, maternity leave.' As writer William Lejeune commented on Twitter, 'I liked the part about the novelist who complained about the poor financial rewards of full-time writing and lack of pension and whose solution was to pursue a 'PhD with the hope of one day finding an academic job.' Because there is some award-winning irony right there.' I replied to this comment saying, 'Whether it's the idea of what book will earn or of academic pay, my generation laboured under outdated misapprehensions on that. I put my savings into a PhD. Financially, putting those investments into property would have yielded more.' When my parents were helping with my education, what does it say about the world they live in that financially helping to set me up as a Buy To Let landlord, who under the Tories could charge anything for tenants in an unregulated market, would have been a better investment than any support in helping me get a PhD? I was labouring under another outdated idea that academic tenure would be financial security in the way my father's single, professional income was to run our household so well when I was a kid. The ground was moving under my feet and neither myself nor the elders steering me were aware of that. And at one point you realise the ground under your feet has entirely changed...