Talking About Pay, Working Conditions, And Audience Responsibility

Anyone who follows me on social media knows that I'm not shy about talking about just how ridiculously hard it is to make a living as a creative professional in general, and an author in particular. From breaking down what reads and watches from an audience actually translate to in Direct Donations Really Are The Best Way to Help The Creators You Love, to pointing out that pay rates for writers haven't kept up with inflation since the days of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, to talking about how Authors Can't Bootstrap Themselves to Success, fully half of this blog is dedicated to talking about the machinery of the writing profession, and the reality a lot of us are facing.

It's come to my attention recently that there are at least a few people out there who are "turned off" by me talking about these facts. How they don't necessarily think I'm a bad writer, but that I complain too much. If that refrain is starting to sound really familiar in this age of renewed union membership, worker fights against corporations, and the rise of Anti-Work, that's good... it means you're paying attention.

Even Dracula was a union man. True facts.

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Talking About Money Shouldn't Be Taboo

There's this social taboo we've had in America for years that you don't discuss your salary. However, the only people who benefit from this are the company, because if nobody knows who's getting paid what, then we just tend to assume everyone is at least at our level. This allows the paymasters to keep the actual books closed, and to strategically undervalue the work of some people. Talking to your coworkers about what you're being paid is, in fact, a legally protected right specifically because this is a shell game companies have used in the past to underpay workers.

When you put your earnings out there, and everyone knows what you're being paid, it can only help you going forward. Whether it's giving your coworkers the information they need to negotiate their salaries with management (or as grounds for lawsuits), or tipped workers pointing out exactly how little they make in order to get the public on their side, there's more to be gained by talking about what you earn than there is keeping it to yourself.

The same thing goes with creative professionals in general, and authors in particular. In fact, I'd argue that it's even more important in these fields, because most people will work as a server, a cashier, or an office drone in their lives... but most people don't take a stab at writing novels, being a reporter, or making YouTube videos for a living. The primary things people think of when it comes to creative careers are the successes; either famous authors like Stephen King, or fictional authors like Richard Castle who have plot money as a result of their books.

So it's up to us to shatter the illusion that all the authors you see out there are making it. In fact, a majority of us have to work a day job, or depend on a spouse's job for main income, health benefits, etc. Real talk here, I've been a professional author for going on a decade now... most of that time I've lived uncomfortably far beneath the poverty line. And by the standards of my career, I'm actually doing a damn sight better than most.

The Responsibility of Knowledge

There is an idea discussed by Innuendo Studios that I will refer to as the Responsibility of Knowledge. In the video below the example is that someone in your friend group chooses not to buy shoes from a particular company because they did the research, and they found out this company utilizes sweat shops and slave labor to account for their low prices. Even though they are merely abstaining from this purchase, the very act of sharing these facts with their friends means those friends no longer have the option of making a blind purchase; they know what it is their money is supporting. As such, they have to deal with the knowledge that they might be part of the problem, even if all they wanted was an affordable pair of kicks.

What does that have to do with authors and their audience? Well, if you tell people the obstacles you're facing, and you make it clear what the conditions you labor under are, then you end up destroying a lot of illusions. The biggest illusion, though, is the idea that it's the author who's responsible for making or breaking their own career.

Because honestly, it's the audience that makes us... and a lot of folks in the audience don't want to hear that.

The closest job I have to compare it to that isn't a creative field is being a server. Because we could show up, provide A+ service, ensuring that everything is given to you in a timely fashion, check in on you regularly, and even slip you some bonus stuff with a wink and a nod, but when the meal is over it literally doesn't matter how well we did our job... what matters is whether the table leaves a tip or not. If a server had sympathetic patrons who want to reward them so that server will remember them the next time they come to this restaurant, then said server will go home with a nice roll they can pay their bills with. If they get people who think tipping is only for the best of the best, they walk out the door with little to nothing to show for the day's efforts.

And that's basically what it's like being an author... especially when you try to explain to your audience that they are the ones responsible for whether you get paid or not.

It doesn't matter how many articles we write, how many YouTube videos we record, or how many books we churn out. It doesn't matter how many social media posts we make, or what cons we go to. At the end of the day, we need the audience to finance us. Period, end of story. Whether it's sharing our work on social media to help drum up attention, leaving positive reviews so the algorithm notices us, buying copies of our books, or even becoming Patreon patrons, or tipping us on Ko-Fi, you decide whether we live or die in a very literal sense.

We're the ones fighting in the arena for your entertainment... but you're the ones who decide whether we fight another day by giving us your cheers, and your coins.

Champions need an active, supportive audience.

Knowing this fact means the audience has a decision to make. Do they value an author's work? Do they want to see that author succeed? If yes, then the burden of helping now rests on them. And while some people are all too happy to help once they know how, others will fold their arms, and demand to know why the author needs their help to be successful. Why is it their problem?

Well, because without an audience, we're just someone talking to an empty room.

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That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

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