Longevity & Leaky Pipes - 2
Why author attrition happens and what we can do about it
Welcome back to part 2 on my ramble through author career attrition rates! Last week I looked at a few data points and what they were suggesting. Now I want to dig into my only-partially-informed and speculative opinions on why we lose so many authors and what we might be able to do about it. Come along for the ride, and please let me know your thoughts - I am not pretending to expertise!
So why do so many authors fall by the wayside?
Cruel reality check. Some books just aren’t very good (Iain Duncan Smith was in my Wiki sample last week, lol). Or some authors only have one book that they wanted to write. So after getting that story out, there’s either no publishing support or no author desire for more.
This is okay actually. This is a kind of neutral attrition. Either the author was happy to walk away after seeing their one book out, or the reading public didn’t want any more thanks!
Author burnout. As I’ve talked about before, entering publishing is an intense and often overwhelming experience. The combination of public-facing scrutiny, project multi-tasking, and comparanoia can do a number on even the most level-headed author, so it would not be surprising if some authors reach the end of their first contract and just … don’t have the motivation to keep going. Or can’t justify the emotional cost in the face of other demands on them. Or they consciously choose to switch away/to other forms because this hasn’t been as fun as they’d anticipated.
A good number of agencies and publishers are working really hard to ameliorate this, to be honest. I’m seeing much more talk about onboarding, author portals, and support than was noticeable even a decade ago. I think the abundance of online author spaces helps too. Mostly. Sometimes they are breeding grounds for comparanoia and eejitery, but they can also be invaluable information-sharing spaces. Debuting into publishing is always going to be one hell of a learning curve, but I feel like the growing recognition that authors need training and clear information is a really positive development.
Mid-list earnings. A fair percentage of fiction books do okay - they might not earn out or hit bestseller lists or win awards, but they’ll turn a (perhaps small) profit for their publisher so the publisher is happy enough to keep issuing contracts. However advances for these mid-list authors are abysmal, are split into ever diminishing fractions to render them even more awful, and are liable to decline each time you don’t earn out (even if the publisher still turned a profit. I know. Ugh). Working so hard for so little is going to eat away at anyone’s commitment, and any sane person might start to eye their royalty statements and wonder how they can justify the effort.
Well. Lol. Can advances go up please? And be a little more balanced between the few 7 figure deals and the rest of us? And not split into more than 3 payments? We need to eat. Average author earnings of £7,000pa do not a viable career make. Invest in our books and we’ll earn you more money, it’s a win:win.
Mid career support. Connected to earnings is the issue of publisher support and backlist longevity. The publishing industry loves to throw everything at debuts, then expect the author’s subsequent books to ride on the coattails of that initial investment. Last week the wonderful literary agent Caro Clarke commented on Part 1, raising the issue of backlists, which was a super important point I’d missed. Most books vanish off bookshop shelves within a year or two of publication - reducing author long term earning potential. Where-as the Susannah Clarkes of the world remain in stock long term and therefore continue to get income from their books (and earn money for their publishers). The maths of bookshop stocking pressures versus the sheer unmanageable number of books being published are well beyond my ken but it’s worth noting that there is still some element of publisher control here, via marketing books long term rather than just in the lead up to publication.
This sort of marketing support for mid-list and mid-career authors would allow authors to (on average, because nothing’s guaranteed) sell better, for longer, earning (on average, etc) everyone more money and allowing the author to devote more time to their craft. Smaller publishers are fine examples of this at work - they can’t afford to just throw spaghetti at the wall so they invest in and push every title they acquire, which makes for a much more level playing field across their lists (and, idk, I’m not a financial whizz, but surely also a better spread of risk?).
The high staff turnover within understaffed imprints almost certainly hits non-lead authors hardest too - via the under-resourcing of marketing/publicity departments, and also the frequent ‘orphaning’ of authors whose editors move on. This orphaning can in unlucky cases mean you end up on the list of an editor who doesn’t particularly love your work, and won’t champion it the way we so depend on them for. Lucky is the author who finds an editor who a) stays in post, and b) is committed to that author long term, wanting to help them grow their career and craft. It’s that kind of relationship which creates space for authors to grow into greatness - hello Hilary Mantel - but which is a rare thing in the current capitalist hellscape.
However well your debut was marketed by your publishers, if your 3rd book is essentially yeeted into the world without backup, chances are your sales will not live up to your hopes or your publishers P&L sheet. So the next deal offer, if there is one, will be smaller. Rinse, repeat.
Again. Lol. Can the big publishing houses decently staff and support their teams, so staff stay in post and have the capacity to champion each of their books? That would be nice. If they could also slightly get over their obsession with debut authors, that would be healthy for the publishing ecosystem too, I feel. And huzzah to the small and medium indies doing this good work already!
Direct bias. This is where it gets sticky. Whose books are publishers investing in, not just once but repeatedly? Who gets a second chance if a book flops? Who gets to reinvent themselves if the market changes? Who gets pitched for festivals, reviews, promotions, awards not just when they’re riding high but also when they are flagging? For example, there has been a lot of talk recently about the spate of high profile acquisitions during the BLM movement, and where those authors are now - with many of them saying they felt abandoned after initial enthusiasm died away.
This isn’t me saying publishing is deliberately gatekeeping out marginalised authors once they’ve had their fill of the trendy debut. I do optimistically believe that the vast majority of people in publishing want it to be a better, more diverse and open industry. But there may well be unconscious bias at play, there may be decisions being made without the right people in the room. For example, if a book about a black teen flops, did it flop because there’s no audience for that (lol no), or because there was little marketing investment, or because the marketing strategy didn’t take young black readers into account because there weren’t any black voices in that meeting? If a thriller with a disabled protagonist flops, did it flop because no-one wants disabled characters, or because its marketing centred a ‘Look! Wheelchair!’ message rather than its genre, so it failed to reach the wide thriller audience who would likely have loved it?
That well staffed department I asked for above? Could it be staffed by a representative sample of society? Could junior staff be paid enough that working class people get to stay and work their way into stable jobs?
Authors, we need to do our bit for this too. We need to ask for things, because let me tell you, Mr White Middle-class Dude is almost certainly asking, and without apologies or qualifiers. We also need to check the rooms we’re in and think about inviting others - on a panel at a festival? Is it all male, or all white? Maybe ask the organisers to invite X author along? Voting in awards? Look at the names you’re putting forward - this isn’t about voting purely on identity but about making sure you’re reading widely enough that your voting isn’t reinforcing bias. Whose books are we talking about, whose books are we blurbing? If we want communal change we need to be that community.
Indirect bias. This is where I say ‘look at points 2 & 3 above and think about who is impacted by those most’. Because that’s essentially my point here. Who is most likely to be unable to carry on writing in the face of low income & high time demands? People who are working class, parents or carers, or working multiple jobs. People who are disabled. There are intersectionalities here too - this section of the author populace is more likely to be non-white, to be neurodiverse, to be female.
So even if you cancel out all direct bias, you will still potentially end up with a skewed survivorship because it’s the women, the working class, the BIPOC and the disabled who are hit hardest by the vagaries of the system. And this here is why the attrition rate worries me. Yes, I wish there was a healthier midlist market in the UK, and yes, I would like my earnings to go up please. But mostly, I look at these stats and I wonder what amazing talent we are losing before they’ve had a chance to blossom because the system squeezed them out. I wonder which readers will continue to search in vain for themselves in the pages of their books because the writers like them weren’t given the chance to get established.
Addressing all of the previous issues will, unsurprisingly, minimise this one. There are also a lot of mentorship programmes around now, aimed at bringing more marginalised writers and publishing professionals into publishing. If I’m honest I have mixed feelings about their overall value, partly because, as the BLM buzz authors found, opportunity needs to be sustained beyond the debut or apprenticeship.
A great thing I’ve experienced myself is publishers & event organisers offering additional support to marginalised authors to attend events we might not otherwise be able to afford. That’s incredibly helpful & allows me to participate in the publicity for my books on a par with non-disabled or more well off peers. I feel very lucky and grateful, and would love to see this kind of support become more widespread.
Writing retreats like Moniack Mhor offering retreats with childcare is another wonderful new development - making a career opportunity instantly more accessible to parents (primarily mothers/afab parents). The Scottish Book Trust’s Ignite Fellowship for mid-career authors is another example of good work helping keep voices in the industry. More of this please!
So huh, that still managed to get long! Sorry!
I went into this having posted on Bluesky about the possible reasons behind high attrition rates and realising I wanted to talk about that in more detail, and also talk about solutions (however wildly improbable) rather than just complain. But having dug into things a little more, I think a) someone who isn’t me needs to get their nerdy head on and do some decent data trawling to see whether there is indeed bias in who survives and who doesn’t. But also b) longevity simply seen as books published over X years misses a lot of the picture, so we shouldn’t get too hung up on the numbers.
Success and happiness in publishing can take very different forms for different authors, and that’s okay. However the publishing industry undoubtedly also has an issue with talent retention. While some of that is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, there are also positive changes happening which I hope will gather momentum. What we as authors can do to build a more resilient career is probably the subject of another post.
Thank you so much for reading & supporting this blog. I am approaching the publication month for We Are All Ghosts In The Forest so things are about to get busy in in-person-authoring. Which means I might be quiet online, or I might need to come talk to you about events and peopling and trains, we shall see…
(omg just realised I can use this forestcat image like this. brb making this my permanent footer…)
Fabulous post. I mean, writing retreats with childcare — yes, please! I’m sure it’s all little tiny baby steps at the moment, but it is great that more things are getting done to even the field a little bit of who gets to be a writer.