(no subject)

I still have no phone. Apparently it's easier to debar internet access than to debar phone access.

You want to know why I was barred? A series of errors (the only one of mine was assuming that everything was OK) by my ISP, solved in a long conversation yesterday. Well, I hope they're solved. I ought to be billed properly, automatically and for the correct amount today and my phone ought to be back up. So far I have no evidence of either. There are still three working hours in the normal day, however, so much is still possible.

If you need to contact me at all this week, email is best. The lack of phone covers the two days I was able to do that kind of officework and answer the phone and etc. From tomorrow till Monday I shall be out and about. I'll return all answering machine messages on Monday. Emails, however, I can deal with while out and about. It may be checking my computer once a day on the busy days, but still, they're dealable with.

I'd better sort out what work I'm taking with me, out and about and spend today and the time after teaching, tomorrow, doing what has to be done.

I shall still be in Sydney on Thursday and I still have some time to see friends. I'll be in the vicinity of the QVB, I suspect, or Central Station, or maybe Chinatown. Let me be honest, I start from Central and will go to Chinatown or the QVB depending on the weather and who I'm seeing. I have to meet my cousin after work, but I'm not sure where, so I need to allow time to get there. And that's all I know.

If there are no friends to waste time with, then I shall do work. I wish I were just a little more advanced in my current work-in-progress, because the Mitchell Library would be helpful. It might be helpful anyway - that's another option, then.

(no subject)

A bookseller and I got into an interesting discussion a few weeks ago. He said (fairly) that the reason booksellers need a good discount on the retail price was because the bookseller has overheads to cover. I suggested that too much discount and the publisher and writer have no income. He said "But you don't have the overheads."

I've been trying to think what overheads writers and publishers can dispense with*. How he could have thought we don't have them.

There are a bunch of things we obviously don't need. Why give readers paper books - they cost money and time and resources to produce? Not printing books at all would save a heap of money, for one, and getting rid of office space and machinery. Paying taxes and electricity can be dispensed with. They're not important. Nor is a telephone - look, I managed without one for 2 working days! Research expenses - they can go. Who needs to research a novel, after all? And that's just the start of cutting down on overheads, since they aren't essential. Copyediting, proofreading, editing at all - who needs them?

The point is that we all have overheads. Anyone not being employed by someone else has the overheads they need to run a business. (Some full-time employees have overheads despite being employed, but that's a different ballgame.) If we don't cost-in those overheads, then we can't produce books. Writers can't, and publishers can't. If booksellers ask for too deep discounts, then we need to stop and think: will there be enough money in the remainder to produce books?

It used to be that booksellers in Australia asked for a 40% discount on cover price and that covered their needs. What the bookseller I was talking with was arguing was that the 40% he received wasn't enough to cover his needs. This is a problem. It makes sense of why some bookshops (big chains, mainly) are asking for 60% off retail price. (Nothing makes sense of the shops that ask for 75% off retail price, in my opinion.)

Paying essential costs to keep the business running is just as much of a problem for publishers, who also have running costs even after take out the printing and distribution costs have been deducted from what's left after the 40% (or 60% or 75%) has been deducted. Also, they have to take out the author's percentage.

And what about the author? How does a writer survive on a percentage of a percentage of a limited number of his/her books in print when a bookshop has trouble surviving on a larger percentage of all sorts of books in print? The answer to that is "with difficulty."

The only fiction writers who make a decent living from their fiction are those who have extraordinarily good sales. There are numbers out there, and they are depressing, so I'm not going to quote them. Most writers survive by having a day job. Or part-time other work. Or casual teaching. That's me, right there, casual teaching and occasional other work. My case is complicated by my health, though, and will probably change as I get better - fulltime work is something I yearn for, plus the decent income thing.

I now have bookshops-of-preference. They are the ones that only ask publishers for a 40% discount. They may complain about their overheads, but at least they realise that there are other parties involved who also need income.

What got me about the discussion the other day was that the owner of this rather good bookshop had never thought that writers might have overheads. That we need space to write and a computer to write on and paper to print and cartridges and printers and electricity and all those other odd things. He thought producing books was a labour of love. Which it is. So is my teaching. I love both. That doesn't mean I don't intend to earn a living and it certainly doesn't mean that all writers need no income from their work because the purity of their hearts is sufficient unto all things**.

There's a dream about writers. We're supposed to live on air and create fairy visions from nothing. I love that dream. Alas, however, I also love eating.



PS I can stop ranting now, my phone is back on!! That's what got me thinking about overheads: sudden loss of contact with almost everyone.

PPS Pity about the not ranting any further. I had a fine rant in mind about libraries that demand free copies of their books from the author. I had 4 in the first five days after publication and not one of them was from my own local library. It's nice of them to want copies of my book, but what's this about me providing them, personally? No wonder bookshops are having trouble with overheads and publishers have diminishing sales and writers need day jobs...



* Note that I am feeling very sarcastic today before you get mad at me for suggesting that books are dispensable with or any of the other foul heresies I'm spouting. I nearly suggested that I handwrite my next novel and let people read it page by page, at a cost of 10c a page. Or maybe a price per quire, modelled on the Paris University textbooks-for-hire in the 13th century. That would cut down on overheads! Mind you, it would mean that anyone who wanted to read my work would have to deal with my handwriting.

** Sorry, I lost it there.