APWG Report on Author Earnings Misses the Mark

Report Sends Wrong Message to Writers and Misses the Opportunities Inherent in Digital Self-Publishing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, June 11, 2019, London, UK: There’s a revolution underway in the publishing industry. Independent authors are writing, publishing, licensing rights, and earning significant incomes in one or more business models. But the All-Party Writers Group’s (APWG) report released today refers only to the age-old income battle between trade publishers and their content providers.

Failing to include self-publishing and creative business for authors means this report is a missed opportunity, says Orna Ross, founder and director of the Alliance of Independent Authors.  “Author organizations and government organizations have a duty to embrace the fact that the global publishing landscape has changed. The fact that countless numbers of authors around the world earn more money through self-publishing than trade publishing must be acknowledged if we care about author income.”

ALLi’s Ross presented to the UK All-Party Writers Group Inquiry into Author Earnings in December 2018, saying we need to talk about the future of authorship in completely different terms. Her deposition focused on digital business models and creative and commercial opportunities for authors in a transformed publishing landscape.

Continuing to study and write reports about the sad state of author earnings without engaging with the opportunities afforded by author-publishing keeps authors mired in a psychology of dependence and helplessness, rather than encouraging the empowered growth mindset of the successful independent author.

Ross says that aspiring writers hoping for a trade-publishing contract despair over their chances of ever being ‘published’, while complaints about falling incomes are widespread among trade-published authors, as advances and royalties fall. Independent authors embrace the responsibility of reaching their own readers, directly and in partnership wiht a variety of service. They see themselves as creative-directors and  business owners, rather than professionals or freelancers.

“While no pathway to successful publication is easy,” says Ross, “digital self-publishing is an empowered choice in an expanding market, with significant potential for growth in the authors’ own hands, whereas the old model relies on others, and can only ever cater to a small percentage of authors.”

This is the message of ALLi’s Self-publishing 3.0 Campaign which encourages today’s authors to self-publish in multiple formats, on multiple platforms, in multiple territories, and to consider ten possible business models which can provide the sort of sustainable and scalable author income that was not possible pre-digital self-publishing.

“This is the message we should be sending to authors concerned about income,” says Ross. “And the facts that should be of interest to all concerned. More than a decade after digital self-publishing has transformed the marketplace, why are we still issuing reports that ignore its existence and potential?”

About ALLi

The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) is the only global, non-profit association for self-publishing writers. ALLi aims to foster excellence and ethics in self-publishing; to support authors in the making and selling of their books; and to advocate for author independence through publishing skills, creative entrepreneurship and digital business development.

Quick Facts

• More than 10 percent of ALLi’s global membership have sold more than 50,000 books.
• Independent authors choose to self-publish to retain creative control, generate higher royalties, and maximize their earning potential.
• Indie authors distribute, sell, and market their books globally, not in a single country.
• Indie authors are entrepreneurial minded, invested in the success of their author careers, creative directors of their author and publishing businesses, hiring others to help them with things like editing, proofreading, cover and interior design, marketing and promotion.

 Learn More

• Psychology of Successful Self-Publishing
• Self-Publishing 3.0 Campaign
• ALLi media release: Governments Must Acknowledge Changed Nature of Authorship

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Media Contact:

Boni Wagner-Stafford

ALLi Communications & Media Manager

Phone: 1-833-228-8467

or (52) 612-136-7036 (Mexico)

Email: press@allianceindependentauthors.org