There are a number of reasons for this. Amazon discounts heavily, ebooks are given away for free and the public’s appetite for books is in decline, along with the space devoted to them in newspapers and magazines. Even writers that most people think of as hugely successful struggle to make ends meet. In 2012, Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black, told her Twitter followers that she was broke, in spite of the fact that the film of her book had earned £100 million worldwide.