Lionel Shriver’s arguments are generally more nuanced than reported and the click bait headlines do her no favours. Underneath the headlines and selective quoting, there are some valid points for discussion.
I am not generally a fan or initiatives that shift the focus from the writing to the writer. Labelling someone ‘a women writer’, ‘a disabled writer’ or ‘a writer from an ethnic minority’, implies the label is significant, a lazy shorthand for someone who writes chicklit, someone who writes about triumphs over adversity or someone who writes about the experience of being from an ethnic minority. Once labelled, it can be hard for writers to escape that label and has a restrictive impact on their writing. It sets the expectation in the reader’s mind that the writer will write in a certain way or even flag a writer as not being for them even if the writer is exploring a topic of interest to them because the reader doesn’t see beyond the label.
The label ‘male, white writer’ is never used because there’s an assumption the default writer is male and white. The work of the default writer has evolved into a yardstick against which all writing is judged. Writing can’t just be measured on objective criteria. You can produce a technically proficient sonnet that’s boring to read. Subjective criteria and cultural values become part of the measurement and, against a white, male yardstick, it’s no surprise writing by writers who are not white or male gets under-represented. Under-representation occurs when writers face additional barriers to publication and when published writers find themselves less likely to get reviewed and less likely to be put forward for prizes.
This is where initiatives to increase representation from under-represented writers have come from. Some of these have been recording statistics on who gets reviewed and who does the reviewing. Some have been in creating new prizes to draw attention to under-represented work. More recently, Penguin Random House have opened a mentoring scheme (publication is not guaranteed) and a crowdfunded anthology focusing on working class writers is underway.
If an increase in representation could be achieved by encouraging under-represented writers to write and submit more work, the imbalance would have been cured by now. It hasn’t done so because “submit more” assumes gate keepers, such as editors, agents and publishers, don’t have biases and work on objective criteria only. Rejection is a key part of being a writer, but writers are only human and no one rises above a long string of repeated rejections, particularly when making submissions to magazines or publishers who don’t publish work by writers like them. For example, if a magazine publishes 40 poems in an issue, each by a different poet, and 35 of those are by men and 5 by women, it doesn’t inspire women to submit work. If women do submit work and get rejected, they are more likely to assume it’s not worth trying again because only 5 publication slots are open to them. A man, seeing the majority of contributors are men and assuming that he has 35 publication slots open to him, is more likely to assume it’s worth trying again.
Balancing initiatives also have to define who they regard as under-represented and assume writers would be happy to identify as the relevant category of under-representation, even if such identification carries stigma and prejudice. Initiatives risk being criticised as filing quotas and possibly diluting the quality of work due to being part of a numbers game instead of focusing on quality. There’s also a risk of alienating those who qualify as under-represented but don’t want to be labelled. Most initiatives rely on writers self-identifying.
Broadly, I think the balancing initiatives have merit, but the debates they’ve triggered need more nuance and less black-and-white thinking. Immediate responses to click bait headlines or selectively quoting to support an agenda is not the way to contribute to the debate.
Are Free Downloads Worth the Cost?
August 15, 2018 — emmalee1Farewell and good riddance oceanofPDF. For those who somehow missed it, this site offered free pdf downloads of books regardless of whether the books were still in copyright or not. It was driven by user request and if a writer or publisher requested a book be removed, the website refused to do so.
The site’s founders appeared to be aware that they were not helping writers and urged users to “leave reviews so authors get something back” and use word of mouth to recommend books to others. Urging others to use free downloads does not help writers either.
I get that
In some places books are difficult to get hold of or heavily censored or prohibitively expensive, but that doesn’t give you a right to a free download
Books are viewed as expensive by the same people who will buy an ebook reader, spend money on tickets to a one-off event like a sports game or cinema visit when a book can be revisited many times
Sometimes your money just doesn’t stretch to accommodate a reading habit so why not take up reviewing and get free books in return for a review, or is that not a fair price (and why is it not a fair price)? Do you demand supermarkets give you groceries for free because you’re too busy buying books to afford food?
It’s too inconvenient to visit a library. Tough. Try Project Gutenburg or Google Books. In the UK, writers do get paid when books (print, audio or ebooks) are borrowed so borrowing from a library instead of freeloading does make a difference.
People who use free downloads aren’t necessarily going to buy the book so the download doesn’t represent a lost sale. That doesn’t give the freeloader the right to make the download available to readers who might have bought a copy and helped the writer.
What if I buy a book and loan it to my friends? Great. But you probably don’t have 10,000+ friends; free downloads are available worldwide on a larger scale.
Shouldn’t writers be glad they’re being read? Samples of my poems are available online. These are free to access because I have chosen to make them free to access. You can read my work without infringing my copyright.
From a writer’s viewpoint
Free downloads aren’t recorded as sales. If sales for a current book are low, publishers won’t risk taking on the next book. Lack of sales also impact the amount of marketing budget publishers are willing to spend on the next book.
Writers don’t usually set the prices for books. Even self-published books can be discounted by stores so giving writers little control over how much they earn since their earnings are usually a percentage of the (discounted) sale price. A percentage of nothing is nothing.
The Society of Authors’ earnings survey indicates writers in the UK earn an average of £10,000 (average wage in the UK is £26,000). Most writers already do full or part time jobs in addition to writing. Taking away chances to earn money from writing mean writers get to do less writing. This not only means fewer books but also impacts on a writer’s ability to experiment and develop their craft and talent.
Unless a writer signs their rights away, copyright is still owned by the writers. Infringing that copyright impacts the writers and has a negative and demotivating effect on them.
It’s relatively easy to take a document and convert it into a pdf, stick it on a site and let others download it. But you can only do that if the document exists in the first place. Writing a book takes work, effort, emotional labour and time. Writers deserve to be paid for that. Depriving a writer of the opportunity to be paid means depriving the writer of the means to produce future books. Do you want all your books to be written only by those who can afford to work for free?
I have a search engine alert that lets me find sites offering downloads of my book and I will request my books are taken off and report the site to Google. I am fed up of having to do this because it eats into my writing time.
I know that the model behind oceansofPDF will be replicated elsewhere. I know many oceansofPDF users were adamant they loved the site and want it back. But not one of those users was supporting the writers they purport to love. Every free download comes with costs, are those costs acceptable to you?