The Poor Author and the Rich Bookseller by Washington Allston, 1811

The week my third novel was published I had an event at a book festival in Pennsylvania. It was exactly the sort of event I had always dreamed of doing. Rubbing elbows with highly successful authors, participating in an author panel, being interviewed for the local newspaper and various online blogs.

And yet, as I was hanging out in the green room, listening as my fellow authors discussed their hotels, their dinner plans, and the various tourist spots they intended to visit once the festival was over, I felt a burning anxiety in my chest. I had a dirty secret I desperately needed to keep hidden, and I was terrified that somehow I would let the truth slip. And, should my secret come out, it would destroy my career.

My family was living out of our van. We were homeless.

It was a moment of twisted irony. I was being lauded among the wealthy, all the while knowing my proper place was among the peasants.

But it wasn’t unusual. In fact, I have been living in this irony my whole life. My entire publishing career has been buoyed on this irony, no matter how many times I’ve hoped to drop anchor on my dreams.

There is an unspoken rule about publishing: It is a path only for those with financial stability.

Or maybe the rule isn’t so unspoken. What other conclusion can be drawn from articles like the New York Times’ “Does It Pay to Be a Writer?” which outlined the abysmal median income of authors in 2018 (a jaw-dropping $6,080 per year). And how many times have you read the keystone advice, “Don’t quit your day job,” the implication of which is, “You’d better have a day job if you want to be a writer.”

In other words, the unemployed and underemployed need not apply.

We talk a lot about diversity in publishing, and well we should. The publishing world is far too white, male, straight, and abled. Which is not to say that white, male, straight, and abled people are to blame innately (although certainly some are), but rather that there is something about the publishing world, some unseen gatekeeper, that makes success easier for that particular class of people.

I would venture to say that the income barrier is one of the biggest gatekeepers. It may well be the biggest. Let me explain.

First some numbers.

According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, in 2017 only 9% of the 3,700 children’s books surveyed were written by authors of color (African American, American Indian, Asian, or Latinx). This alone is reason to be concerned, but the breakdown of those groups highlights even more disparity. Here is how the demographics broke down:

Compare these numbers to the American population:

Beyond the fact that the publishing numbers overall are abysmally low, there is also a jarring difference between which groups are represented in publishing versus the representation in the population. Why are Latinx people, who are the largest minority group in the US, so poorly represented? Why are Asian Americans, who in the US population are just over a third of the African American population, leading African Americans in the publishing world?

The numbers begin to make more sense when you compare the diversity rate in publishing with the poverty percentages in America:

Look at those numbers side by side with the publishing diversity numbers:

These two lists look very similar, with the only disparity being between the placement of African Americans and Hispanic/Latino Americans, but given how close they are on both sides, we can allow for a margin of error. It would appear that there is a correlation between how impoverished a people group is and how represented they are in publishing, far more than there is correlation between the diversity of the US population as a whole and diversity in publishing. Of course, correlation doesn’t equal causation, so we can’t draw the conclusion based on these numbers alone. Instead, we should ask ourselves an important question:

Does poverty affect a person’s ability to write a book, publish a book, market a book, and succeed at becoming a career author?

From my experience, the answer is yes.

My Caveat:

As I previously hinted, I am well acquainted with living in poverty. I spent all of my childhood and adolescence, and most of my adult life, well below the poverty income level. Even now, as a full-time high school teacher, I am depending on government assistance to feed my family and pay for medical expenses. I could write books on books relaying stories of living in poverty (in fact I have, the Johnny Cannon books lean heavily on my childhood experiences).

Of course, I am white, straight, male, and (for the most part) abled. I would never claim to represent the minority experience in America. But, even though white Americans are the lowest percentage on the poverty scale in America, they are the largest impoverished group numerically. Therefore I feel confident that I can speak to the poverty experience in America, at least generally. After all, when it comes to poverty, “We all float down here.”

How does poverty affect a person’s ability to write a book?

I first dreamed of being a writer when I was ten years old. For the next four years, I wrote nonstop. But then, when I turned fifteen, the reality of living in poverty took its toll. I had to get a job because my family didn’t make enough money. From that day forward, I worked every legally available hour so I could have money and ease the burden on our family’s finances. When I went to college, I worked full time. When I left school, I had to take on two jobs and sometimes three simultaneously to meet our financial needs. I simply didn’t have the time to write.

Finally, when I was thirty, I returned to college.My family lived off of my Financial Aid so I could attempt to focus on my studies. And, lo and behold, when I didn’t have to work multiple jobs at a time, I was finally able to write my first novel!

Living in poverty isn’t just about living without financial means. It is also living without expendable time. And for an aspiring author, expendable time is the only time you can write.

The lack of free time isn’t simply due to working multiple jobs or overtime hours. Surviving in poverty means living at the mercy of other people’s schedules. I can’t tell you how many hours of my life I’ve wasted in lobbies waiting for the DFS worker to call me into their office (literally a four or five hour wait occasionally), or waiting by the phone for a food stamp interview, or riding the bus for an hour to get to the grocery store that would only be a fifteen minute car ride, or being on hold while making payment arrangements for my utilities, or waiting at the emergency room because Medicaid wouldn’t cover a routine doctor’s visit. And all of those had to be fit into a schedule of working two or more jobs and finding childcare.

And, of course, my experience is from the abled white male perspective. I can only imagine how much more challenging my obstacles would be if I needed an interpreter, or if I had to manage a pregnancy, or if I had to deal with prejudices regarding my skin color or cultural background. I don’t know that I would have, in the midst of all that struggle, had the strength to dream of writing a book, let alone chasing that dream to fruition. I suspect this is true for far too many as well.

How does poverty affect a person’s ability to publish a book?

After I finished my first novel, I researched how to get published. I learned all about self-publishing and traditional publishing. I read the pros and cons of each. And when I was done, I almost threw in the towel and gave up on my dreams. Why?

Because, regardless of the path I would have chosen, it seemed impossible to succeed without a middle-class or higher income.

Certainly, self-publishing seemed at first to be the easiest and most accessible option. However, when I began to research what it would take to succeed at self-publishing (ie. hiring an editor, hiring a cover designer, creating a marketing plan, promoting across platforms, etc.), it became painfully obvious that the financial investment in self-publishing was beyond my reach.

Meanwhile, traditional publishing posed its own challenge: How do you connect with literary agents? At first, this seemed easy. All you had to do was send a query letter. Just like millions of other authors. And, just like millions of other authors, receive rejections.

However, after my 100th rejection, I dug a little deeper in my research and read the stories of other authors. How did they get their agents?

Networking. So many authors’ stories included meeting an agent at a conference or festival, participating in a workshop, etc.

And what does networking take? The two commodities people living in poverty do not have: Time and Money.

It only took a twenty minute perusal of the websites for writing conferences for me to know that I was hopeless. Admission fees of $50 seem low for the smaller festivals, but you have to factor in travel costs and hotels and food. And for me, $50 was over a day’s wages. It wasn’t possible.

Thankfully, I discovered WriteOnCon, a free online writing conference. I decided to give it a shot and, just like so many other authors, it was through that conference that I met my agent, Marietta Zacker.

And yet, imagine if my circumstances were worse. What if I couldn’t afford to have high-speed internet in my house? What if I couldn’t afford a computer? Would I have ever discovered the conference? Absolutely not. I am painfully aware that, even in my poverty, I had privilege others don’t have. Opportunities others never get to see.

How does poverty affect a person’s ability to market a book?

For most authors, book marketing is a mysterious craft akin to alchemy. We can imagine the results we hope to achieve, but we haven’t the foggiest idea what elements to use toward that end. Many of us find this to be a prime reason to choose traditional publishing. Let the professionals handle it, after all, their pockets are much deeper and their resources seemingly endless.

Reality is harsh. For most of us, the marketing plans of publishers are minimal at best and depend largely on authors taking initiative to set their books apart from the crowd. Doing that, however, requires resources on the part of the author. Resources impoverished people simply don’t have. Resources book advances ought to cover but, because most advances are $10k or less, do not. Let me give a coupleof examples.

When my first book came out, I knew that I would need to do school visits to have a chance at success. I knew this because I heard it from other authors, not because I heard it from my publisher. I went on to contact schools through various connections I had made and managed to schedule several school visits. When I told my publicist and editor, they congratulated me and told me I was doing a good job. But there was no budget to pay for my travel expenses or to compensate for the time I would be away from work to do these events. If I wanted to continue down this road, it would either have to be at my own expense or at the expense of the schools. And when I attempted to place the financial burden on schools, my opportunities dried up. Who wants to spend the money on bringing in an unknown, debut author?

Another marketing avenue we are told we must utilize is social media. Authors are expected to have an active, vibrant online presence with a wide platform. This expectation is built on the online presence of all the other brands competing for the attention of our audience. Brands that have full-time, paid social media professionals. And yet we attempt to build a similar brand on our own, for free. But to do that, you need time. And phones that haven’t been shut off due to lack of payment. And internet that is working. And did I mention time?

This isn’t to mention the expectation that authors will have swag for giveaways, time to do interviews, money to pay for a website, etc. All for an advance that will likely be the only money they’ll ever see for their writing, an advance that can’t even cover their expenses.

Which brings us back to the self-published author. At least an author going the traditional publishing route has an advance to offset some of the financial burden. The self-published author has even more expenses and more hurdles, with absolutely no upfront finances.

No wonder impoverished people don’t pursue dreams of writing.

How does poverty affect a person’s ability to become a career author?

When you sell your first book, you believe it’s the start of your career. As does everyone else associated with you professionally. But what you don’t realize is that starting your career doesn’t mean acquiring more resources. Expectations increase, as do responsibilities, but there is no decrease in financial pressure or strain. If anything, as has already been illustrated, the financial strain only gets worse.

Of course, this is a challenge for every author, regardless of economic status. I have known authors who have been on the New York Times Bestseller list who have had to get a job to make ends meet, or other authors who have had to move back home with their parents for a season while they waited for royalties to pay out. Nearly everyone in this business has to utilize their safety net once or twice.

But impoverished people don’t have safety nets. The only thing catching them is the ground.

Hence the reason, when my third book came out, I was homeless.

See, after my first book was published, I realized that I couldn’t possibly survive on my book income, so I got a job. Two, actually. (White, straight, male privilege in action, I know. “I needed a job, so I got a job. Easy peasy.”) But then, when my second book came out, the strain of working two full-time jobs and attempting to promote my book became too much. I had a nervous breakdown and had to be put on medication. All of that affected my job performance. I lost one of the two jobs the January after my nervous breakdown. I lost the second one the following June.

My safety net was my van.

Okay, that’s a bit over-dramatic. My family and I moved in with our friends for a few months, then into my brother’s apartment for a few months. And we thank God for them. There were only a couple of weeks during which we were living out of our van and a tent. It could have been much, much worse.

But during our ordeal of homelessness and clawing our way out of despair, how many books do you imagine I wrote?

The answer is zero. For almost three years, I couldn’t create anything at all.

This is the invisible prison of poverty. You can only create when you have something from which to create. Only God creates ex nihilo, out of nothing.

But when you are in poverty, ex nihilo is all you have. And it’s all your career will ever be. Or so you are tempted to believe.

Of course, there are Cinderella stories.

Heck, in some ways, I’m one of them. But when we hold up authors like J. K. Rowling as an example of someone who “made it” out of poverty, we should remember that she was white, a college graduate, and had been an English teacher prior to her two year stint on welfare as she wrote Harry Potter. There is a world of poverty that most people can never understand. It’s a world of poverty that, I’m convinced, keeps the world of publishing from being the diverse landscape so many of us want it to be.

So what can we do about it?

I don’t exactly know, but I know we have to do something. Our passivity regarding issues such a diversity has gone on long enough. I would imagine any solutions we can create will need to involve a few factors:

Eliminating financial hurdles to enter the publishing world. This will probably involve more pro-bono editing, more agents making themselves available, and more authors mentoring aspiring authors. It will likely mean going out of our way to discover and develop authors living in poverty, partnering with schools and teachers in underprivileged areas to plant the seeds of a dream that will motivate people to overcome obstacles and achieve success. Honest communication about financial burdens. Talking about money, salaries, etc. is the biggest taboo in the publishing world. But how on earth will an editor, publicist, or agent know how to help an underprivileged author if finances are never discussed? And it won’t be enough to discuss these issues. Publishers and agents will need to partner with authors in addressing financial needs and be willing to do whatever they can to alleviate the financial burden that rests so disproportionately on the authors’ shoulders. More revenue streams for authors. Right now, authors receive less than a quarter of the profits on their work, and any other opportunities to make money from their work is considered “the dream.” Movie rights, video games, etc. are the go-to examples of ways your work can make more money for you, but everyone knows these are rare. The amount of work expected from authors versus the amount of reward they receive is disgraceful. Perhaps we need to explore radical ideas (revenue sharing among authors, maybe?) and out-of-the-box thinking (why is there not a cosmetic line linked to Furyborn?) to make the author experience a more reliable career choice. Intentional acquisitions from agents and publishers. Let’s face it, in many ways, publishing actually is a zero-sum game. Every book that gets published equals another book that is not published, because publishers have a limited budget and want a limited catalog. To that end, every time a publisher chooses to publish a book from a well-represented group, they are also choosing to not publish a book by an underrepresented author. “But what if there aren’t any options from underrepresented authors?” This is precisely my point, there should be. Agents must go out of their way to find underprivileged authors, publishers must demand better representation in their catalogs, and booksellers must insist on more diversity in their bookshelves.

If the publishing world is not a world where people living in poverty can survive, all efforts to bring in diverse authors will be pointless. Rather, publishers and agents will be enticing people into an unsustainable lifestyle, setting them up for failure, and in the end creating a worse publishing landscape than we currently have.