Cost of Letters

When I was a naïve soul, way back in my teens, I always dreamt of being a published author. My friends all believed that one day I would be, and they talked of the lavish lifestyle I would then lead, the big house I would own, and the fancy car. I bought into that too – because hey, if you got published you would be rich, rich, RICH!

And then I discovered that was not the case. Indeed, when a little book came out a few years ago, a book called the Cost of Letters, I realised that most writers were not earning much at all. They were not rich, rich, RICH! They did in fact need other jobs to subsidise their writing. And those who didn’t were worried about where their next pay-cheque would come from. Cost of Letters was a book that was both fascinating, but was so dream-busting that at one point I thought “why bother?” Why bother spending years of writing just to get peanuts at the end? Do I look like a monkey?

Well, I do enjoy the odd banana or two, but that wasn’t the reason I shelved the Cost of Letters (indeed I lost my copy while I was away in Australia). Money isn’t the motivation here, indeed you would be foolish (or young and naïve) if it was. It’s the writing itself, and then seeing it in print that makes it all worthwhile, isn’t it? Maybe that and the feeling and the knowing that someone, somewhere, is reading your book, either on the bus, on a beach, or tucked up in bed and is perhaps really enjoying it.

But I’m not a monkey, no really. And while money is not a guiding light to me, it certainly would open a few doors. Indeed, if I earned enough money I could even write full-time, and then I could finish at least two books a year, rather than the lonely one I currently manage. At least that way I wouldn’t have a note-book full of unwritten and incomplete novel ideas (at the moment without coming up with any new ones, it would take me about another thirty years to finish every writing project I had in mind).

So, yeah, money is handy. Especially as writing isn’t a completely cost effective hobby. Indeed, once you get published you have to spend money. Spend money to make money, isn’t that the way? Buy a website, pay for a launch do, travelling, travelling and travelling… So stuff costs. And stuff costs a lot for me at the moment as I’m a first time house buyer and houses in Sheffield are going for silly money (all I want is a house in a quiet area with a room big enough for a study!!!). So going back to the title, what is the cost of letters for me? Well in the book, it said on average a writer needs about 20k to live on, and for me a little bit more to cover the outrageous house prices in this country. Now to get that from my current one-book deal with Macmillan, I would need to sell 19,000 hard-back copies of The Secret War in a year. It doesn’t sound much if you are a bestseller writer (and that position would be very nice, thank you), but for a first time novelist and a first time house buyer, these figures and expectations do not meet up.
Poverty is one of those things that moulds writers and their writing (I have been in poverty, and yes it did mould certain creative skills, but it also left me hating baked-beans on toast for the rest of my life). So I know the difference between uncomfortable and comfortable living, and I have my dreams. But I am a realist, and I’m not a monkey, and no longer do I cling to romantic assumptions that I will be dining on cake and fine wine after I get published next year.

So, again to the Cost of Letters. It’s in the hands of the gods, or rather the people who buy and read books to decide whether I can write full-time. What would it take for you writers out there to be comfortable? And can you see it happening?