Copyright Doesn’t Provide A ‘Living’ For A Successful Author

Copyright is built on a lie that most people seem to accept: artists can make a decent living from the current system of rewards that copyright provides. As Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) explores, all the data about artist remuneration shows that isn’t true. Alongside such dry statistics, it’s good to hear about the personal experiences of creators, and I recently came across a fascinating post by the writer Monica Byrne, published in May this year. Its title is self-explanatory: “Can an author make a living from royalties?”. The post is particularly valuable because Byrne generously gives all the details of her earnings arising from her second novel, making it possible to see the reality of copyright for a modern creator who seems to be thriving:

First things first: by most measures in traditional publishing, my second novel The Actual Star was a success. It earned out its higher-than-average advance, which was $40,000*, less agent fee.

“Earned out” refers to the system of paying authors an advance against possible future earnings from royalties. It is only after that advance has been “earned out” by actual royalties that additional money is paid to an author. Byrne says that The Actual Star is in the top 20% of all books published in terms of earning out. But the additional royalties she has received after earning out are rather small: for the past calendar year they amounted to just $4,370.67, and to $6,936.14 in total. Looking at the overall income, she writes:

“But Monica, you were paid $34,000 up front.” (That’s $40,000 less the 15% agent fee.)

Yes, this is true! So that brings my total earnings for the book to $40,936 [$34,000+$6,936].

If we average that over the time since we sold the book (October 2019), that’s $8,187/year.

If we average that over the time since I actually began to research and write the book (January 2012) to today, that’s $3,411/year.

Clearly, it’s not possible to live on such a meager income. Byrne explains how she manages:

The reason I can survive is because I have the incredible support of a direct patronage community. The amount of support fluctuates from month to month, and the changes Musk made to Twitter have severely damaged my ability to advertise. As of now, I can still pay for basics—housing, food, healthcare, transportation—especially now that I’ve left the U.S. to save money. But my situation is very rare. And maintaining it is its own full-time job.

She says that she earns about $43,200 from such direct patronage – a decent sum, but one that requires a lot of work in terms of encouraging fans to contribute, an activity that takes away time from her creative writing. For what it’s worth, it precisely the model that I advocate in Walled Culture, and it’s interesting to see it working here. But the fact that a successful author like Byrne depends on patronage underlines the point that copyright simply does not do what most people think it does: provide a decent income for a good writer. Commenting on the reasons why today’s copyright model is not working for her or others, Byrne writes:

“But Publishing Is A Business, Monica.” I’ve heard this many times from many quarters. Yes! I agree! But it’s a business built on the unpaid and underpaid labor of the very workers who generate its product. Art is labor, no different from any other kind of labor; just as artists are human, no different from any other kind of human. To take it a step further, humans deserve the basic means of life independent of their ability or desire to perform labor, and that’s a whole other conversation; for now, while we advocate for Universal Basic Income, I welcome alternative compensation models for authors. And I appreciate whenever publishing professionals welcome them, too.

The suggestion that a Universal Basic Income should be introduced is a good one. There are lots of advantages for society as a whole, especially for those at the bottom of the financial hierarchy. For artists, it would amount to state patronage of precisely the kind that produced most of the great works of art created in past millennia, but extended to everyone. It would not replace direct patronage from fans, but it would provide a solid foundation for artists to build on as they sought to build this kind of support, as Byrne has done. Even the smallest Universal Basic Income would be better than nothing, and almost certainly better than the few crumbs that today’s creators are granted from the rich banquet enjoyed by the copyright industry.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally published to Walled Culture.