After polling 1,674 Guild members, Mary Rasenberger, executive editor at the Authors Guild, created a splash a few weeks ago by claiming that most of its members' annual earnings were below the federal poverty level of $11,670. She spread the blame around: bookstore closures, the rise of Amazon, publisher consolidations, and the low royalties authors receive from publishers. But do these alarm bells ring true?
It became clear that Rasenberger was talking about the five publishing conglomerates, while ignoring the more than 2,000 independent publishers listed in Literary Market PlaceThis site uses the huge publishing database belonging to the American publishing bible Literary Market Place, but free access is only to the small press listings and publishers' names and addresses. To get access to all the other information and to use of their powerful search facility, the annual fee is $399. www.literarymarketplace.com/lmp/us/index_us.asp
. When she says that "authors need to be cut in more equitably on the profits their publishers see," this is another assumption that all publishers are profitable-as opposed to the reality, in which some are going broke, others are losing money, and some are just breaking even.