Late the other night, when I was cruising the mean, dark alleys in my home city’s bustling nightclub district searching for my next victim, I overheard an interesting remark that a certain reputed predator was rumored to be back in town. The source was a ‘woman of the night’ who was expressing discomfort regarding her client’s request to allow him to ravish her in what she correctly perceived to be an unsafe location. Like a squatting dog ensuring that its master was near enough to defend it while it assumed its most vulnerable position, the woman’s eyes roved about in a vain attempt to locate her manager as the man pressed her back against a grimy brick wall. But said personage was nowhere in sight and despite her misgivings, she decided to let the man push up her skirt and proceed as he would. This could have been a fatal mistake on her part for both of them, as I could easily have attacked while they were preoccupied, and they’d have never known what hit them. But feeling gratified by the evidence she’d provided that my infamy was at last becoming known among the common folk, I opted to give her and her almost equally unfortunate consort a pass and moved on to another alley.

I am not that infamous predator, whomever or whatever he/she/it may be. Instead, I’m just a not particularly well-known indie writer. There is however at least one person in the world who thinks I’m famous. One time when I was perusing the wares at an Outer Banks indie bookshop that carries the coastal tales I write as Garrett Dennis, my friend the shop owner approached me and said, “That customer over there recognized you when you came in, but she’s afraid to talk to you.” When I asked why that was, the owner replied, “Because she thinks you’re famous.” After a shared chuckle at that, I of course said hello to the starstruck woman and offered to sign a book of mine that I saw she’d picked up from the shelf. She exited the shop happy, so did I, and this memory is what inspired the paragraph above – that, and the fact that this is supposed be a ‘dark’ blog, so I thought I should inject some darkness into this post.

But maybe that wasn’t really necessary, because the reality for me is, it’s midnight and I’m not famous yet. I say ‘midnight’ because I’m getting on in years, and I can tell that I’m really not all that famous from my middling book sales (including my Gerhard Dennis horror/sci-fi books). That’s sort of ‘dark’, isn’t it? And speaking of, it’s a good thing I’m not relying on said books to make ends meet, because in addition to inadequate royalty payments, creators like us seem to mostly get the shaft in whatever industry we’re involved with. And that right there was the intended point of this post, before my reminiscing about my own fame, or rather the lack thereof, distracted me.

Despite all that talk of fame, I truly do not desire it. But I do desire fair compensation for my creativity, as do other creative folks. Musical artists are complaining (and in some cases actively protesting) about the pittances they receive from the music streaming services; film and television writers are on an extended strike against the studios as we speak, due to dishonest accounting and cuts in their compensation; book royalties, even for traditionally published books, are too low; and of course, let’s not forget the stereotypical ‘starving artist’ (painters, illustrators, etc.) – which is in reality not just a stereotype.

Specifically regarding us book writers (since that’s what we are here), why is it that seemingly everyone but us makes good money from our work, despite the fact that we’re the ones who do the creating? I think this is true whether we’re independent or traditionally published. Granted, there are overhead costs to be accounted for when running a business, but why do e-book royalties range from 25–70%? I think we should be paid more like 80-90%, since after all e-books are only computer files that cost distributors zilch to manufacture and distribute. Aggregators (like Draft2Digital) for ‘wide’ distribution (i.e. not exclusive to Amazon) of indie e-books charge a 10% fee, which is understandable since that’s their only income stream; and 10% is enough to keep them afloat, so why couldn’t Amazon do the same? When Amazon’s Audible audiobooks first started, their royalty rate was in fact 90%, but that has since declined to 40% (or 20% if the author does a royalty split with a narrator), and only 25% if the book is not exclusive to Amazon. Amazon pays a royalty of 60% for print books distributed within Amazon (40% outside of Amazon) – but minus printing costs, which can result in an actual payout of less than half of those percentages. Amazon is already making a profit after our royalty, so why do they make us pay the full printing cost? Traditionally published authors have it even worse (typically 10-15% for hardcovers, 5-8% for paperbacks, 25% for e-books and audiobooks); so they might make $1 from a $20 print book. And I’ve heard that if we’re lucky enough to get a film deal (not that I would know), we can expect to be paid 2-3% of the planned production budget up front (additional income on the back end is negotiable, but not likely if you’re not already well-known); so, we might get $1 million out of a production budget of $50 million. Not too shabby at first glance, until we realize that the producers and main actors will each be paid more than that, which doesn’t seem fair to me. And I’m told that TV deals typically pay us creators less than that (again, not that I’d know).

No fair, I protest here at my Festivus pole! At least, not to most of us. For big names like J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, James Patterson, and so on, the pennies that the powers-that-be toss to the actual creators after nickel-and-diming them to death and slurping up their bloated profits add up to enough to keep the upper-tier rabble happy – but that’s not true for the rest of us. Our situation is more like that of my writer friend Rodney Riesel, who created this amusing meme (for which he was paid nothing):

Sad but true, eh what? But who knows, maybe the situation will improve someday. Meanwhile, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

(Apologies to Jimmy Buffett for appropriating some of his song titles. Hopefully, his ego will be gratified by this evidence of his great fame and he won’t get annoyed at me. Anyway, Mister Buffett, as I imagine you know, titles cannot be copyrighted; and furthermore, these particular titles are not trademarked either – so, nanny-nanny-boo-boo to you, good sir! But seriously, in case some cosmic coincidence ever makes this post visible to you, I like your music and wish you nothing but continued success.)