Writing books has become a hobby for the wealthy, writes Toby Young over at the Telegraph. Writers’ incomes have dropped 29% since 2005, he points out, and even when writers are getting paid, it’s never enough:
I wrote another book last year (What Every Parent Needs to Know), and this time I actually received a small advance. But I had to give half that money to a collaborator because I was too busy earning a living to write it on my own. Even then, it was a gargantuan amount of work. If you divide the amount I was paid by the hours I spent working on it, I’d have been better off delivering flyers for the local Indian takeaway.
