Society of Authors Calls For Transparency Over Earnings

Writing in The Bookseller, Nicola Solomon, CEO of the Society of Authors, has challenged trade publishers to adopt a fairer approach when calculating fees, advances and royalties for authors.

In 2013 a study by the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) showed professional authors’ typical annual income had fallen by 29%, to £11,000. ALCS is updating the study: and the Society of Authors in urging all authors to take part.

According to their own published data, the profit margins of the big corporate publishers are increasing. In 2008 Simon & Schuster Inc reported a profit margin of 9%; in 2016 it was 16%. Together, Penguin and Random House now record a margin of 16%, almost double what they recorded separately. The Bookseller editor Philip Jones believes that trade publishing is now more profitable than it was, possibly by as much as third - a similar increase in profits to the fall in income authors have suffered.

In the article, Nicola challenges publishers to state in their accounts how much they pay to authors, illustrators and translators in advances, royalties and secondary income.  Her demands include:

• Fair terms. Ahead of EU legislation, all publishers should sign up to Society of Authors CREATOR principles.
• Transparent and clear accounting to show exactly how much publishers pay authors, illustrators and translators.
• Publishers should commit to paying authors a higher proportion of turnover, and increase advances and escalators.
• Redistribution to a wider pool, not just celebrities, but writers from across society. With details of how author share is distributed in company accounts.

The Society of Authors president Philip Pullman commented: “To allow corporate profits to be so high at a time when author earnings are markedly falling is, apart from anything else, shockingly bad husbandry. It’s perfectly possible to make a good profit and pay a fair return to all of those on whose work, after all, everything else depends. But that’s not happening at the moment. I like every individual editor, designer, marketing and publicity person I deal with; but I don’t like what publishers, corporately, are doing to the ecology of the book world. It’s damaging, and it should change.”