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'Most authors are driven to write'

13 July 2015


'Most authors are driven to write - would probably write whether or not they were ever published or paid, just for the joy of it. This is their strength and their downfall. With the exception of a canny few who treat art as a business, writers are often reluctant to think of their work as just another product. We do not like to think of our books as units, to be bought and sold.

And yet, to the publishing industry, that's exactly what they are: the product of thousands of hours of work - of editing, copy-editing, design, marketing, proof-reading and promotion. It takes a lot of people to help create and publish a book; and although the creator - the writer - is surely the most important of these, the average author's earnings have fallen quite dramatically over the past 10 years or so.' Joanne Harris, author of The Gospel of Loki and Chocolat, in the Daily Telegraph.