From Horizon Research:
Writers’ earnings
On average, writers in the survey earned $56,900 per annum. Writers’ average personal
incomes were 56% of their average household incomes.Writers earned an average of 24% of their personal income, or around $13,500 per annum,
from their writing.While female writers in the sample had total personal incomes 10% below male writers in the
sample, they earned 10% more per annum from their writing (an average of $13,800 per
annum) than male writers ($12,600 per annum).Income earned overseas from writing averaged 14% of total writing earnings, around $2,000 in
the past 12 months.Overall, 27% said their income had increased in the past 12 months, while 32% said it had
decreased. 34% said their income had remained the same over the past 12 months.
Royalties were by far the most common sources of writing earnings. Around half of those
earning royalties for printed books received them at 10% RRP or 17.5% of publishers net
receipts, while nearly 4 out of 10 received less than that.More than half of the writers in the sample had never received an advance and 27% of those
who had said the value of the advances received from publishers had remained the same over
the past 5 years.Half the respondents said that in addition to any income they earned from writing they relied on their partners’ income, and nearly two-thirds said they relied on having a job. For nearly half of the writers, the employment they had was unrelated to being an author.
Nearly a third said they relied on National Superannuation; this reflects the age distribution of the respondents, with 32% aged 65 years or over.
Link to the rest at Horizon Research and thanks to Erica for the tip.
Here’s a link to a discussion of the study on Radio New Zealand
The Auckland Allies urban fantasy series is pretty fun. Made me want to visit Auckland. Apparently Auckland does not return the love for its indies.
(Zealandia is cool!)
Well, this full-time New Zealand author didn’t even hear about the survey, so…
Maybe we should conduct our own survey 😛
Ditto. I’m a full time writer and never heard about the survey. But then I’m not surprised. If you self publish and write *gasp* genre fiction, then the NZ literary scene doesn’t want you dirtying their doorstep.
Hmmm, is it just me, or did they again ignore all those writers that were rejected — and therefore made 0.00 through trad-pub?
Do you think that question three might have been about earnings and since they didn’t have any earnings they were unable to continue the survey and therefore counted as incompletes?
Whoa, average household incomes in NZ are high if 57K is 56% of average.
Aha, but here’s the kicker. Living is hideously expensive.
In Australia, which is comparable, the median wage is something like $75k. Sounds like a lot, but not really when every major city’s real estate is in the top 10 most unaffordable in the world.
Seriously, Bendigo, a regional city 2 hours out of Melbourne is less affordable than New York City.
It also depends on where you live in NZ but then income can vary based on location as well. If you live in a city then the price of rent / houses / gas / food are higher than living outside of a city.
Remember that is also household income, not single person income.
From AuthorEarnings.com’s latest:
+1
Right, what I said in another comment. Writers in English speaking countries like Australia and NZ are the last people who should be chasing traditional deals. There isn’t enough people to sustain a good industry in the traditional model.
I’m an NZ author and I’ve never heard of this survey. Reading the executive summary, participation was by invitation only sent through publishers. So this is trad published author data only. Indies are not wanted – which is the prevailing attitude in NZ, it’s very trad-centric.
I think I saw the survey back in October when it went out but you’re right. It was distributed through the larger writer organisations where trad is king.
Did you listen to the RNZ discussion? Even my husband facepalmed while we listened to it.
NZ, like Australia but even more so, sounds like the exact place indie publishing should be embraced by writers.
Australia just doesn’t have a critical mass of people to support a flourishing local publishing scene. Hell, the US has 300m people and that seems to barely manage.
I’m glad I’m not the only one leaving Palm prints on their face. I follow a couple of the people on the rnz thing, via Twitter, and I really want to direct them to the comments here. They seem to have what the Sell More Books Show guys call Mahogany Desk Syndrome. I can understand that they are part of the kiwi literature scene and therefore they need to be verified within that scene, by a local audience, but faar out, when they say that their industry is being damaged because Indies charge such low prices and paperback novels are$40… wtf is wrong with them if they think letting the trad publishers screw over their audience is not the problem!?
…although, I guess the fact that a trad paperback costs $40 is a good thing for indies…
“[Female writers] earned 10% more per annum from their writing (an average of $13,800 per annum) than male writers ($12,600 per annum).”
A growing gender royalty gap! We need to create awareness for this. Equal pay for equal writing.