Ken Whyte, founder and publisher of SutherlandHouse Books — wrote an opinion piece in the summer of 2020 in the Globe and Mail, which you can read in full here. He declared, “Last January, the U.S. Authors Guild declared a “crisis of epic proportions.”

Why?

The median income for its members was US$6,080 in 2017. “If you isolate what the authors made on book sales (as opposed to speech-making and pole dancing), their median income was US$3,100,” he writes. “Those working with traditional publishing houses made US$12,400.”

The crisis is just as epic in Canada, he declares, where the average writer made $9,380 last year, according to the Writers’ Union of Canada.

The New York Times, in an article about pandemic book sales, disclosed that “98 percent of the books publishers released in 2020 sold fewer than 5,000 copies.”

According to author Elle Griffin, this intel shouldn’t be so shocking, but then again, she’s a writer. “People don’t read books — and the ones that do aren’t buying them. To make matters worse, books that publishers released are only the success stories — those books that scored hard-won Big-Four publishing contracts — and those are already a small piece of the book publishing market,” she writes in an article titled, “Writing Books Is Not a Good Idea.”

According to Bookstat, 96% of books sold online only sold between 0 and 1,000 copies in all of 2020.

Giffin writes this is “distressing.” Yes. Yes, it is! 

She explains, “If I can spend two to three years writing a novel and my best-case scenario is having it sell a couple hundred copies on Amazon, perhaps it’s time to face the music and realize that writing books — like knitting or playing the harp — is nothing more than a hobby. Something I can do for fun on the weekends but should never hope to earn a living from.”

Alas, too many aspiring authors are so eager to say, “I’m a published author!” that they will take nothing, as well as give up some of their revenue.

With my author hat on, a zero-dollar advance from a traditional publisher sets a terrible precedent for authors. Also, does this author believe their manuscript is worth zero dollars?

However, with my human hat on, I can say this author persevered her dream, which is commendable. (Bravo!) 

Also (human hat still on), why do I care? If she’s okay accepting a zero-dollar advance, splitting royalties, and seeing her book published two years from now, again, that’s her decision.

Now, with my publisher hat on — it may be time to buy a hat rack — this could be a great business model for a start-up publisher. Not giving any advances, obviously, lowers their overhead. And, sure, the publisher has to pay for the cost of producing and distributing books. But if even ONE of their handful of upcoming titles sells extremely well, they will be able to make some revenue.

Which brings me back to Margaret Atwood.

While searching for that article on bidding to be a character in her book, I came across this odd site, kind of like Wikipedia (which your kids should not base their school research on!). This site knows my name and my horoscope. (Shout out if you’re a Taurus, too!) It also knows about my participation in this charity auction, relaying how much I bid, and weirdly, under a section with large font, “Who is Rebeca Eckler dating?” it reads, “According to our records, Rebecca Eckler is possibly single and has not been previously engaged, and “as of June 2021 Rebecca Eckler is not dating anymore.”

I mean, WTF? What happened exactly as of last June 2021 that made someone write I “stopped dating?” Or that I was “possibly single?” And, in fact, I have been engaged. Twice! (See why you can’t rely on sites like Wikipedia?)

Even weirder, under another large font headline, “Rebecca Eckler Net Worth,” it reads, “Rebecca Eckler is one of the richest writers and listed on Most Popular Writer.”  (Why didn’t anyone ever mention this to me?)

“According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, Rebecca Eckler’s net worth is approximately $1.5 Million.” (If you want to know my height, weight, body measurements ethnicity, nationality, ancestry, and race, sorry, you’ll have to “Come back in a few days for an update!”)

I was beyond shocked. I checked my cameras. Had someone secretly been stealing statements from my mailbox? 

I decided to do some detective work Google “Rebecca Eckler” and “Net Worth” only to find out that according to another site, my net worth is between $1-5 million dollars.

And according to this site, “Rebecca Eckler’s net worth is $11 Million.”

Now, I’m not going to tell you how much I am or am not worth, because it’s none of your fucking business, writers and authors and journalists don’t write for the money! (Zero advance?) 

I’m sure we all can agree that money isn't the most important thing in life, but it’s kind of close to oxygen on the “got to have some” scale.

Even going back and forth with Jan Wong, getting off-topic about the sobering outlook for journalists, she wrote, “I didn’t know you are financially smart — because you are so well-dressed, manicured, etc.” 

That’s because I don’t go broke trying to look rich.

Yes, you may get a gift from me, but I’m using a recycled gift bag. Yes, I spend a lot off time price-comparing different shampoos and lotions. Whatever smells the best and is the cheapest comes home. I shop at Walmart for all my son’s clothes because he likes fashion and needs to realize that too many people spend money on things they don’t need with money they don't have, trying to impress people (they don’t even like!).

I can be frugal, or, as some would call me, a “cheapskate.”

Sure, I've made some money from my books, usually when they sold in other territories, were optioned for film/TV rights, along with selling all my audiobook rights, which I kept in my contracts. 

I was savvy enough, I guess, to see that audiobooks would become “a thing.”

But it should not shock anyone when I say even successfully selling books doesn’t often lead to guaranteed financial security. I made money in other ways — blogging, writing, consulting, agreeing to do speeches, being an influencer, posting for cannabis companies and clothing lines. 

And I was lucky to have made a couple of good investments, too, in stocks and real estate.

I recognize that I’m part of the problem by not being transparent about my advances or how much I made from each book. 

Authors do not walk around asking each other, “How much did you get as an advance?” Why? It’s fucking embarrassing.

Publishers aren’t exactly transparent either. There is a particular set of terms used on Publisher’s Marketplace, an publishing industry site ($25/month sign-up), that announces book deals and highlights the monetary (bracket) of the advance, meaning, how much money the publisher paid the author. It looks like this:

Nice Deal: $1–$49,000

Very Nice Deal: $50,000–$99,000

Good Deal: $100,000–$240,000

Significant Deal: $251,000–$499,000

Major Deal: $5,000,0000

This gives both the publisher and the author a very soft way out of not actually having to answer candidly, “So how much was your advance?”

So, technically, an author could say, “I got a ‘nice deal,’” which could either mean they got a $20 advance or $35k.

Last year, Lithub shared a post called, “Here’s 33 Writers on Why They Write.” The answers ranged from, “I am trying to write to the universal…” to…”Writing is an extension of my body…”

Canadian Sheila Heti (#girlcrush) said, “I hope that the book lets the reader experience my thoughts and then their own thoughts and that my thoughts become their thoughts, and then their thoughts become more clear to them, to me, that’s a kind of help.” 

I so want to ask, “Come on! You’ve never also had the thought that you’d like to be stupid rich? Never? Not once?”

Not one of these 33 writers answered, “I write to pay for my kid’s education.” Or “I write because one day I’d like to own a yacht,” Or “I write in the hopes I can retire by 55!”

Oh, how I wish I could ask these 33 writers, “If you could choose between having a book published or have Bill Gates’s money, but can only have one, which would you choose?”

I’m pretty sure all these writers would choose Bill Gate’s money. (I think?)

The closest anyone probably came to  admitting the truth about why writer’s write was Gertrude Stein, who when asked why she wrote, replied “For praise.”

Orwell wrote: “All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon which one can neither resist nor understand.“

Yet, never before have so many people desired to write for a living, even as they enter Lululemon and see that a pair of yoga pants is more expensive than what they make in book sales these days.

Erica Jong, the author of Fear of Flying, alluded that writers write because it offers them the chance to say what they think. 

This is something even a lot of non-writers rich people may envy. Because if people knew the truth about how much the average author makes, they would never start a book, ever. And that would be terrible.

I do believe if more writers treated their writing and books like owning a business, they’d fare a little better. 

When I started to write professionally at 17 years old, someone wisely told me to automatically set aside a certain amount, that I would not touch, with every cheque I deposited. 

I didn’t remember having that account…for 14 years! It added up.

Because I’ve always seen writing as a job, not a calling, I always ask how much I’ll be compensated. If the compensation is $100, and I have to interview a number of people, I can and usually do turn it down (except if there is a charity component).

What goes through my head is pretty simple: To do the interviews plus the writing could take me eight hours. That is less than $10 an hour. I can save that $100 by simply not buying four-ply toilet paper — you know, the good stuff — for a few weeks.

Everything we do is a choice (including if I should get up and pee right now or wait until I’m done writing this.)

But if you wanted a surefire way to make a good living, with a lavish lifestyle, you should become an orthodontist or engineer or create a cool app — all of which are better careers for those who want financial stability.

SutherlandHouse publisher Ken Whyte believes authors are starving partly due to the fact that four out of five books are read at no charge, i.e., borrowed from libraries.

He calls out “people who can afford books: disproportionately middle-class, upper-middle-class and well-educated,” describing them “entertainment readers” — ouch! — and also cheapskates. (Maybe “Smart with money” would be more apt?) 

He believes, as he has a right to, even though he's totally wrong, people who can afford to buy books should, because borrowing books from the library means lost sales for authors.

This is ridiculous, even from an author’s point of view (mine!) But I’ll let Maya tackle this topic with her mathematical brain.

 Ken, you’re too fucking exhausting for me. 

Honestly, if we had argued this over the phone, I would start the call with, “This conversation will be recorded for training and quality purposes” to show that he needs to get out of whatever bubble he’s living in and talk to everyday humans who read for entertainment.

Then again, maybe his argument does make sense and I might be wrong. (So, in conclusion, after sending him 18,000 texts, what I’m trying to say is I’m sorry, Kenneth, for bothering you with…my existence! #notsorry)

I did my own poll of avid book readers, mostly my mother’s friends and people I randomly picked from my latest text messages — 22 humans in total. 

I asked two questions: “Do you know who Ken Whyte is?” (Purely for fun!) and “If you are a library goer but became next-level wealthy, would you continue to borrow books, or would you start buying them?”

For the first question, 20 out of 22 answered “No.” Granted, I didn’t expect my snow plower — on my text list — to know who Ken Whyte is. (Although, everyone in the publishing world does!)

But all of them had an answer to, literally, the million-dollar question (which I tried to explain to Mr. Whyte over text), which is, “Why would I buy if I can get it for free?” 

Almost everyone I polled said they’d continue to borrow because…they don’t want the clutter of books anymore.

So maybe Whyte should blame Marie Kono, who made organizing and decluttering cool.

When I asked the same people if they’d pay for a subscription fee for the library, as we have for Netflix — which is one of Whyte’s ideas — most responded, “Maybe. But I am paying for the library already with my tax dollars, so probably not.”

Plus, rich people are rich for a reason. 

Aside from having high net worths, they're frugal or “cheapskates.” But it’s this fucking characteristic that helped them become rich, and stay rich. Case in point? Beyonce shops at Target and she’s reportedly worth more than 300 million. Mark Zuckerberg shops at Costco.

In the 2017 documentary Becoming Warren Buffett, it showed him eating breakfast at McDonald’s. Each morning, he asked his wife to set aside $2.61, $2.95 or $3.17, which determines his breakfast. “When I’m not feeling quite so prosperous, I might go with the $2.61, which is two sausage patties, and then I put them together and pour myself a Coke,” he says in the film.

One in three people with a net worth of more than $5 million say they shop at Walmart — which sells books — according to a survey of 1,200 ultra-high-net-worth investors released by Millionaire Corner. Nearly half said they shop at Costco — which sells books — and almost half shop at Target — which sells books.

Then there are Coupon Divas! One in four people who often use six or more coupons during shopping trips have incomes of $75,000 or higher, according to this research. “They don’t use coupons because of financial constraints but because they perceive coupons as saving them money.”

And being frugal or a “cheapskate” becomes habitual.

Personally, I buy books because I know how much work an author has done to get that book finished.

But don’t be surprised if you see me at a dollar store, buying winter mittens for my family.

Until next time, 

Flip your hair, and flip the page (borrowed or bought)!

xo

Rebecca