Does writing make you rich?

Dreaming of a lucrative new career as a bestselling author? stephen mccarty spells out what to expect in the tricky business of book publishing

SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE one of those historic little market towns in which rural England specialises, a few miles down a country road and a few hundred yards along a forest track – reached through a car-width’s hole in a hedgerow – stands a cream-coloured Georgian former rectory whose best days are far from behind it.

A manor house by any other name, it has a wing or two, chandeliers (not too flashy), a welcoming, lived-in ambience, meaningful art on the walls (framed historical documents), an air of quiet chaos epitomised by stacks of books and idle stringed musical instruments of various provenance, plus outbuildings housing a couple of classic cars (neither big nor flashy).

Woodland ensures seclusion and a hefty dose of tranquillity when needed – an essential ingredient in the writing of your next bestseller. This is just the sort of gaff you might care to buy with the proceeds of your novel, the one that’s sold 1.5 million (and counting) copies and with the loot you’ve earned from the cinematic rendition of that novel. This is the house you might buy if you’ve written Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. And never have to work again.

Unfortunately, not everyone can write Captain Corelli’s Mandolin; and even if they could they might find that gauging the zeitgeist and transforming inky scratches made by a fountain pen into the coin of the realm is a tricky business. Even Louis de Bernières went through multiple incarnations – soldier, potato picker, motorcycle messenger, carpenter, mechanic, gardener, teacher – before settling on bestselling novelist and moving to said manor house from a rented flat above a London junk shop.

Tricky business? Following your book-publishing dreams could end in penury. Kay Goddard, a Sydney-based author of a recently published, large-format architecture and interiors book, is wary of the time and unswerving commitment required to land your book in a virtual or even actual shop window.

“I would like to write another book, but I won’t – because I don’t want to go bankrupt,” she says. “I travelled to 10 countries for research for my book; the advance paid for half of those visits, but only because I blagged free accommodation by travelling with my husband on his business trips. As for my photography budget, well, I relied on images provided by architects that I could use gratis.”

A few weeks ago, a Hong

Kong radio producer asked this correspondent for advice on publishing his first book. Describing himself as a “novice novelist”, he wondered if “those online self publishers” might be a good bet, and if anyone in the industry would “recommend big ones like Amazon for an unknown author – I do hope they can market the book somehow”. He added, somewhat hopefully: “It’s for

general publication, not just a vanity project, and it would be nice if it made a profit.”

If you throw in your lot with omnipresent Amazon it invites you to “take control with self publishing” and “reach millions of readers worldwide” by using the company’s services. These can bring your printed book “royalties of up to 80 percent of your list price”, whatever that might be, and 70 percent for your book on Kindle. Good old Amazon, taking care of publication, distribution and cash generation: easy, right?

Except that when it comes to making money from writing books it’s wise to heed warnings from battle-hardened professionals. Big hitters Philip Pullman (author of the trilogy His Dark Materials), Antony Beevor (military historian par excellence) and Sally Gardner (multimillionselling children’s author) recently told The Guardian that in Britain, “the average fulltime writer” earns £2 less than the minimum wage of £7.83 an hour for workers 25 or older. Consequently, according to a survey of 5,500 professionals, the number of writers whose income derives exclusively from writing has dropped to a mere 13 percent, from 40 percent in 2005.

And that’s not just a sob story. Pullman, president of the Society of Authors, said: “The word ‘exploitation’ comes to mind,” and added, “this matters because the intellectual, emotional and artistic health of the nation matters...” Beevor, Gardner and Pullman blame publishers and online booksellers for the parlous state of the profession of letters, alleging increased hogging of ballooning profits.

Perhaps the most infallible means of making piles of cash from piles of words remains finding a literary agent who has faith in your talent – but also has impeccable connections and the negotiating skills of a Hollywood attack lawyer. Or, if you can find him, Andrew Wylie, known variously as the king of the literary jungle, “the Jackal”, and a ruthless, lone-wolf empire builder. Wylie represents numerous writers (alive or dead) so famous that only single names are required: Ballard, Nabokov, Dylan, Bellow, Kissinger, Updike and many more.

Failing that, why not become a celebrity first and a writer second? From a writer’s point of view it’s a sure-fire route to a whopping advance: not long after leaving the White House in January last year, the Obamas realised that they wouldn’t have to eat at Burger King for the rest of their lives when they finalised a deal for a book each, for Penguin Random House, at a trifling US$65 million plus change. And to think Bill Clinton scored only US$15 million from Alfred A. Knopf for his memoirs.

The publisher throwing these sums around likely realises that such investments might not translate directly into book sales, but who cares about literary prowess when your company name is in all the headlines and, one way or another, all that money will come pouring back in?

But that tricky business, that alchemy of turning words into base metal, sometimes trips up publishers as well as authors. Remember Garth Risk Hallberg? No, neither do I. But for all I know he’s still happily counting his money. Hallberg’s 2015 debut novel, City on Fire, attracted, for an unknown writer, the staggering advance of US$2 million – then proceeded to stagger towards reviews approaching lukewarm. Risk, indeed.

No doubt you do remember

Tom Wolfe, who must still have been basking in the glorious glow of 1987’s The Bonfire of the Vanities when he sold the rights to his fourth novel to Little, Brown for about US$7 million in 2008. Back to Blood emerged four years later and hit the vertiginous heights of mixed verdicts.

Clearly, there’s only one thing to do if you want to make the big bucks as an author: admit that sex sells and always will, then – perhaps taking care not to collect a Bad Sex in Fiction Award from the Literary Review, which has already honoured writers including Morrissey, Norman Mailer and Ben Okri – squeeze into your tightest jodhpurs, riding crop swishing lustily, and hitch your wagon to that grand, bed-busting literary tradition stretching all the way from Jilly Cooper to EL James via Jackie Collins.

Why be Hilary Mantel and labour for years to write Booker Prize winners for a feeble £50,000 a pop (excluding subsequent sales) when you can have so much outrageous fun as James, garnering millions beyond calculation simply by sending Fifty Shades of Grey and its mass-reproducing spawn out into the world?

Bad sex? It’s a fiction. Just ask EL James.

THERE’S ONLY ONE THING TO DO IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THE BIG BUCKS: ADMIT THAT SEX SELLS AND ALWAYS WILL