WRITE?

America's Authors Guild recently collected data from its own membership and the members of 14 other writers' organizations, including: American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Children’s Book Writers, National Association of Science Writers, Textbook and Academic Authors Association, and Independent Book Publishers Association. In all, their Author Income Survey received detailed responses from 5,067 authors and was the largest survey of American authors’ earnings ever conducted.

The findings were shocking, revealing a decline to all-time lows with earnings for all writing-related activities being slashed in half in just a decade: from a median of $12,850 in 2007 to just $6,080 in 2017. For full-time traditionally published authors the median income for book-related activities was $12,400 while the median for all authors was just $3,100. The median income for all writing activities for full-time authors was a meager $20,300, down from $25,000 a decade earlier. And only 21% of full-time published authors derived all of their income from book-related activities.

Of course, all of this is happening as we've watched full-time newspaper and magazine journalist jobs drop by more than 60%. Worse, despite 52% of published writers surveyed having advanced degrees (compared to 11% of the general population), the pay writers receive for online content is typically far below any hourly minimum wage.

*tear*