“Artists in this country are used to living one paycheque away from poverty,' said poet Evelyn Araluen.
from the Australian Society of Authors reported that around half of respondents made less than $2000 per year – and 31 per cent of authors said their income had taken a hit due to the pandemic.“I don’t represent anyone who doesn’t have a day job,” says literary agent Danielle Binks, who also works as an author and creative writing tutor.
This money can’t be relied on like a regular salary. It comes to authors in a few instalments through the publishing process – when signing the contract, when completing drafts, when the book is published – which can take a number of years. And it only rolls in when you have the green light on a new work. Any time spent researching or developing ideas before that point is unpaid.
Though Lancaster – who is also a copywriter, journalist and critic – now really wants to write a novel, she’s having trouble making time. COVID, she says, has created even more of a “scarcity mindset”, where she feels she has to chase paid work in fear it might all drop away. “Emerging writers used to be very reliant on the Australia Council to provide them grant funding,” Binks says. “But it just doesn’t exist [in the same way] anymore.”
“Now that I’m older, married and starting a family, it’s increasingly difficult to sustain myself through my practice alone and I’m seriously considering getting a different job.” But in Australia “the whole area of arts and culture is not seen as important”, she says. “We’re one of the richest countries in the world. And we’re one of the lowest countries in terms of the amount of money we give to arts and culture in the OECD.Sakr supports the idea of a UBI for everyone, not just artists. Though for authors, he says, it would be a particularly “welcome change, [offering] security instead of precarity”.
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