"It used to be that success brought fame. Now you need to be famous in order to even get a shot at success." - this is quite true, and the Matthew Principle means that more success accrues according to fame, rather than the quality of what is produced.
It is noble to create for the sake of creation itself, the expression of our higher-selves, our life force - and our reward is our learning, our growth. But we live in a world that requires bio-survival tickets (Robert Anton Wilson's term for money), the lack of which produce creativity constraining levels of anxiety. It's quite a conundrum.
I'd not heard of the Matthew Effect before, but wow, yes, that's exactly it: "For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away."
Tbh, the only real fix for this is a Universal Basic Income, which would empower people to create without having to worry about survival. Imagine if our world was more focused on helping each other to hone our self-expression, to learn and to grow, instead of scrabbling for table scraps once the rich have had their fill.
Saw it's funny, that's what I was thinking about as I mulled your post: this feels connected to politics and pushing back against the massive inequalities in our societies. I'm more and more attracted to the idea of UBI for this reason.
There is definitely a larger macroeconomic aspect to this, yes. Just as when normal people are given money they immediately spend it in their local (ish) economy whilst rich people just hoard it, when small businesses get money in they also spend it, whereas massive businesses hoard – so Apple has $61 bn of cash on hand. Why? What are they doing with that money?
There are a number of ways to fix this problem, though it'd be a whole post to go through them, but to my mind we need:
1. UBI
2. Regulation capping the disparity between exec pay and the lowest paid person in the company to something reasonable, like maybe 20x. "CEO/median employee pay ratio across the FTSE 350 was 57:1 in 2022" and "The median gap between CEOs and their lowest-paid quarter of employees fell slightly in 2022 to 75:1". Though I have heard that some companies have a ratio of 300+, which is obscene.
3. Banning companies from sending out dividends when they are in debt, which would stop companies leveraging themselves up the wazoo whilst still funnelling money to their shareholders.
4. Banning all private equity. Vampires, the lot of them.
5. Banning businesses hoarding cash.
I doubt any of that will happen, though, so we just have to sort of bumble through as best we can.
I've never expected to make enough money from my books alone to live on (even though they all earn out), they're part of my 'writing portfolio' which I jigsaw together with an actual job as a kind of backbone. I make an insignificant amount from Substack subscribers, but regard it as part of the general promo of my work (as well as a place to experiment with some ideas purely for my own benefit) in the same way as pushing it on Twitter, bluesky, linkedin, insta, etc. I'd prefer not to bang on about my things online, but I don't hate it. I don't know about 5-9, but my writing is about 2-6.
Glad to hear that your books are earning out. In this day and age, that's something to be proud of! I guess where we differ a bit is that my 'day job' isn't stable. I'm working hard to change that, but I think everything would be easier if it were giving me a predictable and decent income.
But it saddens me that so many authors can't earn a living off their books. I mean, the various CEOs are doing great, yet the people whose work makes their businesses possible aren't. Makes me cross, that.
I'm not a writer. I play rock and roll, specifically bass, in a couple bands; and I get the exact same impressions you're getting from the "success mavens" in my business that you do in yours. Like, exactly the same stuff. I don't want to start a cult; I don't want to operate a "marketing funnel", or create big-paying "superfans". My music doesn't require it, and I respect other people's lives too much to demand that much space in those.
What I do is Be Around, show the music card when it seems appropriate, and play live as much as possible. I make records, but only bc I have to to document the journey my bands are on. We sell shirts, CDs, etc., in person at shows we do. Aspiring for more seems like a waste of energy.
My philosophy, what little there is, is I do it to do it. I don't do it for what it'll give me; or who people will think I am for it. The math won't math, as you say. But the longer and more I do it, the better the chance I can leave something worthwhile behind when I'm gone. Who knows what people will value decades from now? Who even knows for sure what they value today? Keep doing it; making a mess, straightening it up, or not. Worry about what it may get you later, or not at all.
I do hear you, and I understand where you're coming from. Though I do think we need to look at how society is devaluing cultural work and ask ourselves whether we want a future where no one is paid to create, and everyone who does create does it in their spare time with only the independently wealthy able to work on their craft full time. I think we'd all lose out if that became the case.
Last year I did a kind of audit, realised I was trying to do far, far too many things, and decided that if what I really wanted to do was write a book, I should use my scarce time to do that rather than write a newsletter or essays. I never monetised the newsletter and it originally started out as a way to keep tabs during a long parental leave period. But I now see it was a useful part of the book-writing process. It never would have made enough money to support itself though – far too labour intensive and niche.
I'm also increasingly concerned about the way in which creatives have been repeatedly putting their (unpaid) work into supporting tech platforms that are, in turn, supported by venture capital. These platforms often have great and ambitious intentions, but each of us has to work out if we will really make good on our own creative investments.
Susanna, that's a really important point about the venture capitalists. There are a lot of people making money off creatives' hard work, but increasingly it's not the creatives themselves.
I also agree 100% about being aware of what we want to achieve and what's getting in the way. I shifted my two newsletters to alternating fortnightly because they were taking up too much time. I might yet turn off subscriptions and move to monthly if I continue to feel overwhelmed. We'll see. But yes, it all has to start with self-awareness.
I agree with everything you've written, this really is like Spotify, we are commoditised. But if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't be here, and what a desperate toil it would become if I tried to make more than a trickle income - such would send me packing. What I like about substack is the quality of the writing, the diversity (excluding nazis) and being in somewhat of a shared space with some great minds and artists, which I find very stimulating.
Yes, I really enjoy my newsletters and I get something out of writing them. I will stop doing them if that stops being the case.
But I do see people who cannot make a living elsewhere - authors whose publishers don't pay them big enough advances, for example, but who are somewhat now institutionalised into the authorial life and can't easily find work doing other stuff - being the most desperate. And I sympathise with them. As with so many things now, it's winner take all. If you're already a successful author you can create more success here; if you're not, good luck.
It's worth, I think, interrogating that problem a bit more deeply because what we're collectively doing as a society is devaluing cultural work and cultural workers on the basis that "anyone can do it these days". That may be technically true but it's not true in terms of not everyone can do quality work.
I understand. (Excuse me for thinking you were in a more formative point in your writer's life.) . It's possible that Medium's business model might be better for building a wider audience reach and having potential revenue through engagement alone—pay for clicks, in other words. I can't say from personal experience, but it seems like an interesting idea to try out.
Oh, no worries at all. I just wanted to contextualise my situation, because it wasn't clear in the post that I've been round the block a few times!
I'm not sure about Medium. Tbh, I've heard the same complains about it that I hear about Substack, that the model just doesn't work for authors with smaller followings. So it's probably worth staying here just because it's less effort than to move!
Maybe that's why new people come on here. look around, and then turn themselves into writing coaches and social media doctors; people will pay for newsletters they perceive as something that will further their careers. I've seen authors on here with big followings who are not offering that sort of thing, thank their subscribers, saying "I don't know how this could have happened, but thank you so much." The laws of attraction are mercurial and mysterious to me, but also fascinating.
The whole "platform" thing is a pain. When I was pitching my book to agents, I got a lot of "it's good but you haven't got a platform". I naively thought it was all about quality.
I'm so sorry you got that. It really does suck that agents and publishers are demanding that authors have "a platform", especially as most publishers don't even do a good job of using their own platform to promote the books they publish. There's so much more publishers could do, but rather than learn how the modern world works and use their size to their advantage, they'd rather make us do it. Honestly, I could rant for hours just on how crap their newsletters are, let alone social media usage.
I've been in Substack for 8 months. It is not an easy place to gain a following, paid or otherwise. I write because that's what I do, and I have achieved that golden balance between writing time and time earning a living. This may be all I ever get out of it, but so far, it's a matter of not thinking in terms of product or material gain. You sort of walk and talk around that rather than going straight at it. How to enliven readers is for each writer to work out. The paradox is that pandering or second guessing will not help. It's better to have your own artistic goals in mind first and foremost. What are you trying to pull off? Then ask yourself: why does this piece have to be out in the world? Eventually, you will write relatable things that are in a voice that is yours.
You're right, Camila, it's very hard to develop a following here. I think that because I joined a month or so before Notes launched, I rather got the impression that the bump in subscribers it caused was a bit of a 'new normal', but it actually tailed off pretty quickly. Now, growth is as slow as it was before Notes.
I am fairly happy with my writing and voice. I've been blogging since 2001, so it's second nature to me by now. I get a lot out of writing my newsletters, so from a selfish perspective they do serve me well.
I think my struggle has been that I had entertained the idea that Substack might become a reliable income stream, and that's just not happening. So my challenge is to let go of that idea, and to think about how much effort I want to put into it. I'm spending less time on Notes now, and am mostly dipping in over lunch or if I'm having a little break between tasks, and that's helping.
I have decided to stop trying to be popular. In part because it has become clear to me why I have a psychological need to write. And if writing ended up being another job where I was beholden to a paying audience I think I would grow to loathe it. This is my own choice and other people are welcome to make their choices.
My take is that for years art (singing, dancing, storytelling) happened among working people and they did it because they enjoyed it. My Substack is the modern equivalent of some old bloke in the corner of the pub playing a fiddle. With each pint he sinks, his playing gets more exuberant and less recognizable. But all that matters to him is that fiddle and those people in that pub. He is never going on Top of the Pops and he does not give a f-.
None of that is to excuse the voracious greed of our tech robber barons. But it does keep me sane.
Each to their own, but it becomes a problem when it's no longer a choice. Financial success in the creative industries has always been hard to get, but there are companies (and governments) making decisions that makes it even harder. So it's no longer about how hard one works, it's about a bunch of other factors over which one has no control but which are putting more and more of a shrinking pie into the hands of fewer and fewer people.
Obviously it's ok to opt out of that, but it's not ok that that's the larger situation.
It was absolutely essential. I wish we could do that here, but Thatcher outlawed closed shops in the 80s. In some cases, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean British authors can't strike.
I'm on two sides here at once: I agree, and I disagree. I understand you have to make money for a living, and writing a novel will take time that will otherwise will be used to make money. In this light, you're very right that these times are bad for creativity.
At the same time, why are we thinking that success = money? Where does this come from? This is the kind of thought that fuels the sort of cycles that gets us stuck. I'm also trying to write more (not as high ambitions, but lets say something close), and I look at my writing session as a collection of "self dates," self care after work where I enjoy writing, enjoy a bar and a drink with myself, and go home. Making money out of it is completely removed, and I'm glad it is, I'd probably be just as drained from creativity if I thought about it.
People obviously have their own ides of what success looks like, but for me success is money. It's having enough to live comfortably and enough to be able to plan for my future. I don't think that's an unusual or unreasonable view of success. After all, we don't ask people in employment to reimagine success, do we?
Whether paid well or paid badly, a job pays. Yet a lot of writers working for publishers or TV/film companies etc are NOT getting paid anything like enough and are having to support themselves with other work. We seem to have reclassified writing as 'not a job' and therefore not deserving of decent pay. Yet, you don't see publishing execs scrabbling by on below minimum wage, and certainly the shareholders aren't hurting, so clearly there is some money in the industry. It's just all going to the people with the most power, and that's not the writers.
I am already getting paid for one writing project – see https://wordcounting.substack.com/s/fieldwork for details – and I'm hoping to develop that project further in a manner that is also paid. But it's important to say that that money comes from a non-traditional source, and it's 100% luck that this happened at all. I'm working with a couple of universities on a project which disposes of the last bit of a grant that had to be spent anyway, and we had nothing else to spend it on. It's certainly not a blueprint for anyone's success, and I don't know if I'd ever be able to replicate it again.
But I am fed up of Substack, and I am fed up of the "Person earns $$$ from every post! Here's how you can too!" bullshit which is largely predicated on a) them having an existing and very large audience or b) them writing in a specific niche or c) them getting lucky or d) all of the above. I'm fed of Substack and all the others going "Oh, you just need 1,000 fans!" because honestly, that maths does not math at all. We are bombarded by people who think that all it takes is to "write what your audience wants" and you'll be off to the races. That is not how it works for most people, and it never will work that way for most people.
So this post is largely about resetting my relationships with and expectations of Substack and the publishing/TV/film industries. I don't have a problem with my writing, in that none of this is stopping me from working. I just don't like the mental landscape I've found myself in and want to change it to something healthier.
Sorry that it took me this long to find your reply (I just did this morning). Thanks for writing back and in such depth.
I understand your angle a bit more now. In general, I see the notion of writing differently than you - and that's fine! We also covered that point. I want to add here that the issues you raise (for example, being tired of the whole "just do this and get $$$!") are also probably part of the reason I'm not looking to make money out of my writing; I know not to expect it because it won't lead anywhere... but why do I even think it's so futile to begin with? A big part of the problem is what you're describing.
I never liked Substack or Medium or any of those places that block people from reading a piece of writing unless they pay. I always saw it as a way where people pay as a token of appreciation; on my site(s), I invite people to "tip" me if they feel like it, and I leave it at that.
You're absolutely right that writers do not get what they deserve, and this became very obvious (at least to me) with the writing guild and the strike because of AI. It's a different topic, yet with a similar effect. In the culture we live in today, I also don't see this change, at least not on the payment front.
No worries re the delay in replying. I've had a bonkers week so only now getting to read through and reply myself!
Whilst I agree with you that it's fine for people to have different motivations, and anyone who wants to work for tips is well able to make that decision. That's basically what I'm doing here at the moment, so I'm not going to diss it.
However, I think we do have to be careful not to fetishise writing and other creative work, and turn it into something where people can ONLY work for tips. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that we want to be moving in the opposite direction. We need people to value good creative work more, and for companies – who can afford it: Profits are soaring at HarperCollins and Bloomsbury – to be paying people decently for their work.
It's a lie promulgated by the people who make real money of creatives' work. They can't make as much money for themselves if they have to pay us fairly.
I hear you about the lack of income for artists. It sucks. I also don't love that the only way for artists to make money is to teach their art (e.g., writers teach writing). It's not great. Specifically for the Grist, I personally would have loved to make it but the timing just doesn't work. If there was a recording or a poll of what times work best you might get more engagement, if that's what you're after.
I totally hear you about the whole issue around teaching. I see quite a few writers, people who've won awards and are feted in their genre, really struggling at the moment and they're largely turning to some form of teaching to make ends meet. But just as only so many people can make money off Substack, so there are only so many who can earn money teaching as well. And if you're not (yet) an award winner, then teaching is largely not on the cards for you.
I'm sorry that the Grist timings don't work for you. I have a fairly limited amount of spare time to do them, so there's unfortunately not much flexibility at my end, which means that it will always be awkward for people in different time zones or with different commitments in the UK evening. Maybe Grist would be better as a set of essays that people could read whenever they wanted to.
"It used to be that success brought fame. Now you need to be famous in order to even get a shot at success." - this is quite true, and the Matthew Principle means that more success accrues according to fame, rather than the quality of what is produced.
It is noble to create for the sake of creation itself, the expression of our higher-selves, our life force - and our reward is our learning, our growth. But we live in a world that requires bio-survival tickets (Robert Anton Wilson's term for money), the lack of which produce creativity constraining levels of anxiety. It's quite a conundrum.
I'd not heard of the Matthew Effect before, but wow, yes, that's exactly it: "For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away."
Tbh, the only real fix for this is a Universal Basic Income, which would empower people to create without having to worry about survival. Imagine if our world was more focused on helping each other to hone our self-expression, to learn and to grow, instead of scrabbling for table scraps once the rich have had their fill.
Saw it's funny, that's what I was thinking about as I mulled your post: this feels connected to politics and pushing back against the massive inequalities in our societies. I'm more and more attracted to the idea of UBI for this reason.
There is definitely a larger macroeconomic aspect to this, yes. Just as when normal people are given money they immediately spend it in their local (ish) economy whilst rich people just hoard it, when small businesses get money in they also spend it, whereas massive businesses hoard – so Apple has $61 bn of cash on hand. Why? What are they doing with that money?
There are a number of ways to fix this problem, though it'd be a whole post to go through them, but to my mind we need:
1. UBI
2. Regulation capping the disparity between exec pay and the lowest paid person in the company to something reasonable, like maybe 20x. "CEO/median employee pay ratio across the FTSE 350 was 57:1 in 2022" and "The median gap between CEOs and their lowest-paid quarter of employees fell slightly in 2022 to 75:1". Though I have heard that some companies have a ratio of 300+, which is obscene.
3. Banning companies from sending out dividends when they are in debt, which would stop companies leveraging themselves up the wazoo whilst still funnelling money to their shareholders.
4. Banning all private equity. Vampires, the lot of them.
5. Banning businesses hoarding cash.
I doubt any of that will happen, though, so we just have to sort of bumble through as best we can.
I've never expected to make enough money from my books alone to live on (even though they all earn out), they're part of my 'writing portfolio' which I jigsaw together with an actual job as a kind of backbone. I make an insignificant amount from Substack subscribers, but regard it as part of the general promo of my work (as well as a place to experiment with some ideas purely for my own benefit) in the same way as pushing it on Twitter, bluesky, linkedin, insta, etc. I'd prefer not to bang on about my things online, but I don't hate it. I don't know about 5-9, but my writing is about 2-6.
Glad to hear that your books are earning out. In this day and age, that's something to be proud of! I guess where we differ a bit is that my 'day job' isn't stable. I'm working hard to change that, but I think everything would be easier if it were giving me a predictable and decent income.
But it saddens me that so many authors can't earn a living off their books. I mean, the various CEOs are doing great, yet the people whose work makes their businesses possible aren't. Makes me cross, that.
Yes, there are some publishers' offices I go into and think 'Gee, this multi-level atrium and indoor fountain must have cost a bit'.
You can bet Nihar Malaviya (CEO of Penguin Random House) isn't worrying about the size of his heating bill.
I'm not a writer. I play rock and roll, specifically bass, in a couple bands; and I get the exact same impressions you're getting from the "success mavens" in my business that you do in yours. Like, exactly the same stuff. I don't want to start a cult; I don't want to operate a "marketing funnel", or create big-paying "superfans". My music doesn't require it, and I respect other people's lives too much to demand that much space in those.
What I do is Be Around, show the music card when it seems appropriate, and play live as much as possible. I make records, but only bc I have to to document the journey my bands are on. We sell shirts, CDs, etc., in person at shows we do. Aspiring for more seems like a waste of energy.
My philosophy, what little there is, is I do it to do it. I don't do it for what it'll give me; or who people will think I am for it. The math won't math, as you say. But the longer and more I do it, the better the chance I can leave something worthwhile behind when I'm gone. Who knows what people will value decades from now? Who even knows for sure what they value today? Keep doing it; making a mess, straightening it up, or not. Worry about what it may get you later, or not at all.
I do hear you, and I understand where you're coming from. Though I do think we need to look at how society is devaluing cultural work and ask ourselves whether we want a future where no one is paid to create, and everyone who does create does it in their spare time with only the independently wealthy able to work on their craft full time. I think we'd all lose out if that became the case.
Last year I did a kind of audit, realised I was trying to do far, far too many things, and decided that if what I really wanted to do was write a book, I should use my scarce time to do that rather than write a newsletter or essays. I never monetised the newsletter and it originally started out as a way to keep tabs during a long parental leave period. But I now see it was a useful part of the book-writing process. It never would have made enough money to support itself though – far too labour intensive and niche.
I'm also increasingly concerned about the way in which creatives have been repeatedly putting their (unpaid) work into supporting tech platforms that are, in turn, supported by venture capital. These platforms often have great and ambitious intentions, but each of us has to work out if we will really make good on our own creative investments.
Susanna, that's a really important point about the venture capitalists. There are a lot of people making money off creatives' hard work, but increasingly it's not the creatives themselves.
I also agree 100% about being aware of what we want to achieve and what's getting in the way. I shifted my two newsletters to alternating fortnightly because they were taking up too much time. I might yet turn off subscriptions and move to monthly if I continue to feel overwhelmed. We'll see. But yes, it all has to start with self-awareness.
I agree with everything you've written, this really is like Spotify, we are commoditised. But if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't be here, and what a desperate toil it would become if I tried to make more than a trickle income - such would send me packing. What I like about substack is the quality of the writing, the diversity (excluding nazis) and being in somewhat of a shared space with some great minds and artists, which I find very stimulating.
Thanks, Dean.
Yes, I really enjoy my newsletters and I get something out of writing them. I will stop doing them if that stops being the case.
But I do see people who cannot make a living elsewhere - authors whose publishers don't pay them big enough advances, for example, but who are somewhat now institutionalised into the authorial life and can't easily find work doing other stuff - being the most desperate. And I sympathise with them. As with so many things now, it's winner take all. If you're already a successful author you can create more success here; if you're not, good luck.
It's worth, I think, interrogating that problem a bit more deeply because what we're collectively doing as a society is devaluing cultural work and cultural workers on the basis that "anyone can do it these days". That may be technically true but it's not true in terms of not everyone can do quality work.
I understand. (Excuse me for thinking you were in a more formative point in your writer's life.) . It's possible that Medium's business model might be better for building a wider audience reach and having potential revenue through engagement alone—pay for clicks, in other words. I can't say from personal experience, but it seems like an interesting idea to try out.
Oh, no worries at all. I just wanted to contextualise my situation, because it wasn't clear in the post that I've been round the block a few times!
I'm not sure about Medium. Tbh, I've heard the same complains about it that I hear about Substack, that the model just doesn't work for authors with smaller followings. So it's probably worth staying here just because it's less effort than to move!
Maybe that's why new people come on here. look around, and then turn themselves into writing coaches and social media doctors; people will pay for newsletters they perceive as something that will further their careers. I've seen authors on here with big followings who are not offering that sort of thing, thank their subscribers, saying "I don't know how this could have happened, but thank you so much." The laws of attraction are mercurial and mysterious to me, but also fascinating.
The whole "platform" thing is a pain. When I was pitching my book to agents, I got a lot of "it's good but you haven't got a platform". I naively thought it was all about quality.
I'm so sorry you got that. It really does suck that agents and publishers are demanding that authors have "a platform", especially as most publishers don't even do a good job of using their own platform to promote the books they publish. There's so much more publishers could do, but rather than learn how the modern world works and use their size to their advantage, they'd rather make us do it. Honestly, I could rant for hours just on how crap their newsletters are, let alone social media usage.
I've been in Substack for 8 months. It is not an easy place to gain a following, paid or otherwise. I write because that's what I do, and I have achieved that golden balance between writing time and time earning a living. This may be all I ever get out of it, but so far, it's a matter of not thinking in terms of product or material gain. You sort of walk and talk around that rather than going straight at it. How to enliven readers is for each writer to work out. The paradox is that pandering or second guessing will not help. It's better to have your own artistic goals in mind first and foremost. What are you trying to pull off? Then ask yourself: why does this piece have to be out in the world? Eventually, you will write relatable things that are in a voice that is yours.
You're right, Camila, it's very hard to develop a following here. I think that because I joined a month or so before Notes launched, I rather got the impression that the bump in subscribers it caused was a bit of a 'new normal', but it actually tailed off pretty quickly. Now, growth is as slow as it was before Notes.
I am fairly happy with my writing and voice. I've been blogging since 2001, so it's second nature to me by now. I get a lot out of writing my newsletters, so from a selfish perspective they do serve me well.
I think my struggle has been that I had entertained the idea that Substack might become a reliable income stream, and that's just not happening. So my challenge is to let go of that idea, and to think about how much effort I want to put into it. I'm spending less time on Notes now, and am mostly dipping in over lunch or if I'm having a little break between tasks, and that's helping.
Another great piece, this one by Sara Eckel, that covers very similar ground and is well worth your time:
https://saraeckel.substack.com/p/the-amateurization-of-everything
Over on Medium, David Burn wrote a good companion piece which is well worth reading: https://davidburn.medium.com/dreamers-gonna-dream-schemers-gonna-scheme-ab46cf649d0e
I have decided to stop trying to be popular. In part because it has become clear to me why I have a psychological need to write. And if writing ended up being another job where I was beholden to a paying audience I think I would grow to loathe it. This is my own choice and other people are welcome to make their choices.
My take is that for years art (singing, dancing, storytelling) happened among working people and they did it because they enjoyed it. My Substack is the modern equivalent of some old bloke in the corner of the pub playing a fiddle. With each pint he sinks, his playing gets more exuberant and less recognizable. But all that matters to him is that fiddle and those people in that pub. He is never going on Top of the Pops and he does not give a f-.
None of that is to excuse the voracious greed of our tech robber barons. But it does keep me sane.
Or to put it another way: https://tempo.substack.com/p/envy
Each to their own, but it becomes a problem when it's no longer a choice. Financial success in the creative industries has always been hard to get, but there are companies (and governments) making decisions that makes it even harder. So it's no longer about how hard one works, it's about a bunch of other factors over which one has no control but which are putting more and more of a shrinking pie into the hands of fewer and fewer people.
Obviously it's ok to opt out of that, but it's not ok that that's the larger situation.
What is your view on collective action like the recent US writers’ strike?
It was absolutely essential. I wish we could do that here, but Thatcher outlawed closed shops in the 80s. In some cases, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean British authors can't strike.
So then what other forms of collective action are available?
I'm on two sides here at once: I agree, and I disagree. I understand you have to make money for a living, and writing a novel will take time that will otherwise will be used to make money. In this light, you're very right that these times are bad for creativity.
At the same time, why are we thinking that success = money? Where does this come from? This is the kind of thought that fuels the sort of cycles that gets us stuck. I'm also trying to write more (not as high ambitions, but lets say something close), and I look at my writing session as a collection of "self dates," self care after work where I enjoy writing, enjoy a bar and a drink with myself, and go home. Making money out of it is completely removed, and I'm glad it is, I'd probably be just as drained from creativity if I thought about it.
People obviously have their own ides of what success looks like, but for me success is money. It's having enough to live comfortably and enough to be able to plan for my future. I don't think that's an unusual or unreasonable view of success. After all, we don't ask people in employment to reimagine success, do we?
Whether paid well or paid badly, a job pays. Yet a lot of writers working for publishers or TV/film companies etc are NOT getting paid anything like enough and are having to support themselves with other work. We seem to have reclassified writing as 'not a job' and therefore not deserving of decent pay. Yet, you don't see publishing execs scrabbling by on below minimum wage, and certainly the shareholders aren't hurting, so clearly there is some money in the industry. It's just all going to the people with the most power, and that's not the writers.
I am already getting paid for one writing project – see https://wordcounting.substack.com/s/fieldwork for details – and I'm hoping to develop that project further in a manner that is also paid. But it's important to say that that money comes from a non-traditional source, and it's 100% luck that this happened at all. I'm working with a couple of universities on a project which disposes of the last bit of a grant that had to be spent anyway, and we had nothing else to spend it on. It's certainly not a blueprint for anyone's success, and I don't know if I'd ever be able to replicate it again.
But I am fed up of Substack, and I am fed up of the "Person earns $$$ from every post! Here's how you can too!" bullshit which is largely predicated on a) them having an existing and very large audience or b) them writing in a specific niche or c) them getting lucky or d) all of the above. I'm fed of Substack and all the others going "Oh, you just need 1,000 fans!" because honestly, that maths does not math at all. We are bombarded by people who think that all it takes is to "write what your audience wants" and you'll be off to the races. That is not how it works for most people, and it never will work that way for most people.
So this post is largely about resetting my relationships with and expectations of Substack and the publishing/TV/film industries. I don't have a problem with my writing, in that none of this is stopping me from working. I just don't like the mental landscape I've found myself in and want to change it to something healthier.
Sorry that it took me this long to find your reply (I just did this morning). Thanks for writing back and in such depth.
I understand your angle a bit more now. In general, I see the notion of writing differently than you - and that's fine! We also covered that point. I want to add here that the issues you raise (for example, being tired of the whole "just do this and get $$$!") are also probably part of the reason I'm not looking to make money out of my writing; I know not to expect it because it won't lead anywhere... but why do I even think it's so futile to begin with? A big part of the problem is what you're describing.
I never liked Substack or Medium or any of those places that block people from reading a piece of writing unless they pay. I always saw it as a way where people pay as a token of appreciation; on my site(s), I invite people to "tip" me if they feel like it, and I leave it at that.
You're absolutely right that writers do not get what they deserve, and this became very obvious (at least to me) with the writing guild and the strike because of AI. It's a different topic, yet with a similar effect. In the culture we live in today, I also don't see this change, at least not on the payment front.
No worries re the delay in replying. I've had a bonkers week so only now getting to read through and reply myself!
Whilst I agree with you that it's fine for people to have different motivations, and anyone who wants to work for tips is well able to make that decision. That's basically what I'm doing here at the moment, so I'm not going to diss it.
However, I think we do have to be careful not to fetishise writing and other creative work, and turn it into something where people can ONLY work for tips. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that we want to be moving in the opposite direction. We need people to value good creative work more, and for companies – who can afford it: Profits are soaring at HarperCollins and Bloomsbury – to be paying people decently for their work.
Yes, the idea that people should do creative work just for love is rubbish. Everyone needs to earn a living.
It's a lie promulgated by the people who make real money of creatives' work. They can't make as much money for themselves if they have to pay us fairly.
I think for most writers “success” means having enough money to write more.
Exactly that, yes!
I hear you about the lack of income for artists. It sucks. I also don't love that the only way for artists to make money is to teach their art (e.g., writers teach writing). It's not great. Specifically for the Grist, I personally would have loved to make it but the timing just doesn't work. If there was a recording or a poll of what times work best you might get more engagement, if that's what you're after.
I totally hear you about the whole issue around teaching. I see quite a few writers, people who've won awards and are feted in their genre, really struggling at the moment and they're largely turning to some form of teaching to make ends meet. But just as only so many people can make money off Substack, so there are only so many who can earn money teaching as well. And if you're not (yet) an award winner, then teaching is largely not on the cards for you.
I'm sorry that the Grist timings don't work for you. I have a fairly limited amount of spare time to do them, so there's unfortunately not much flexibility at my end, which means that it will always be awkward for people in different time zones or with different commitments in the UK evening. Maybe Grist would be better as a set of essays that people could read whenever they wanted to.