Author's Note

One of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, has become the political football du jour, caught in the middle of a firestorm of criticism.  What happened was this – Neil was asked to speak at a library function in a small suburban area and they offered his usual speaking fee.  He asked who was actually paying the fee and found that the library itself was not, but rather a foundation designed to pay for these types of events and, on top of that, if the money was not used soon it would go away per the structure of the foundation.  So Neil agreed to speak and promptly set it up for the entire speaking fee to be split between two needy charities.  He did the event, which by all accounts went off swimmingly, the charities got their much needed funds, and all was well, right?  Not so fast…..

There are some who seem to believe that Neil should not have taken his fee from a library/his fee could have been better spent on librarian salaries/buying books/what have you.  There are others who feel his fee is outrageous.  There are those who feel he’s a “douche” for even charging at all, that he should be giving back because he already has so much.  Let’s take on a few of these points, shall we? 

1) Neil should not have taken his fee from a library, etc. –
He didn’t.  They offered funds from a separate foundation to pay the fee.  The library’s operating funds were never touched.  The foundation money is also structured in such a way that those funds could not be used to pay librarian salaries, or buy books, or for anything other than special events, and it was about to go away.  The money had been awarded the previous year and if the library didn’t use it soon the money would be lost.  

 
2) Neil’s fee is outrageous –
Neil Gaiman’s fee is in the neighborhood of $45,000 for an engagement, which he readily admits is high.  He does to keep the volume of speaking requests at a manageable level, because  he’d rather be writing not working the lecture circuit, which makes sense given that he’s a writer.  And really, compared to other speakers, his fee is not all that high.  Many political and business speakers demand, and get, in excess of six figures.  Personally, I think Neil is worth the fee he asks for.  I’ve heard him speak and he’s brilliant. 

 3) Neil’s a “douche” for charging, needs to give back, etc. –
To begin with, Neil already gave all the money he earned from this engagement to needy charities.  I’d call that giving back.  Also, he frequently does do pro bono speaking engagements for worthy groups like libraries and schools, and in fact, earlier that week had done two pro bono engagements, one to raise funds for charity. 

 But what really gets under my skin about this whole kerfuffle is the overarching assumption that Neil should not be making those kinds of fees.  Why?  He’s a talented writer.  His imagination is amazing.  His books regularly make best seller lists all over the world, and get optioned to be made into movies (several are already done – Stardust, Coraline, et al.).  Fans wait in huge lines for hours just for the chance to have him sign something and get their picture taken with him.  In the scifi/fantasy world, the man is quite the rock star. 

 So what’s the problem with him earning a lot of money?  He’s extremely good at what he does, one of the best.  There are legions of fans eager to buy his work.  He works hard and puts out a lot of “product.”  He gives back to the community on a frequent basis (going at least part of the way to show he’s a stand up guy, and not douche-y at all).  Why shouldn’t he earn a big payday? 

 Oh, that’s right.  He’s an artist.  He’s not a movie star or an athlete or any other type of person our culture readily accepts as getting huge paychecks.  For the most part our culture seems to believe that artists should be grateful for being paid at all, especially if they are earning more than a subsistence level.  And that, my friends, is what I think there should be a kerfuffle about, not that Neil Gaiman earned a large fee and gave it to charity.

The opening page has a long list of books to click on and download and the express instructions that users cannot “borrow” more than 5 e-books in a 2 week period (violation will result in banning from the site) and that after the user is finished with the e-book, he/she is on the honor system to delete the book from his/her e-reader. My first thought was that this is not so different from what I do when I buy a hard copy book and then loan or pass it on to a family member or friend who I think will enjoy it. It also follows closely to the absolutely legal brick and mortar library model. But as I cruised through the website I noticed a few things –

1) The size of the list – it’s huge. I find it really hard to believe that this man has purchased and read every single one of these books since the advent of e-readers. Not impossible, but hard to believe.

2) Throughout the website there is inflammatory rhetoric about the “thieving publishers.” All publishers are thieves? Really? While I don’t defend or condone any shady business practices on the part of any business, and publishing is a business, I don’t think that we can paint ALL publishers with such a broad brush. There are plenty of snakes in the grass out there, but there are also a lot of editors and publishers who are honestly in love with the written word and who just want to get good books into the hands of eager readers.

This was all starting reek of scam, not someone who was just trying to share the joy of reading. Then came the part that got my hackles up…. He begs for donations to keep the website up, citing having to pay for bandwidth because of all the downloads and also spending so much time sourcing the e-books. And then he lists different donation amounts and what extra perks come with those amounts, which pretty much amounts to buying a membership in the site – And for 90 euros you can receive a DVD of the entire collection. WHAT?!?!?!

This now goes way over the line, my friends. A blank DVD does not cost much, and while postage (depending on where it’s going) can be more than a pittance, the cost of both of those together is not even close to the 90 euro mark. He does not write the book; nor does he participate in typesetting, editing, or proofing the book; nor does he bear any of the cost of promoting or distributing it, and yet he’s making money off it. And that, my friends, in my humble opinion, amounts to thievery.

The man is a thief and a scam artist. He’s not just magnanimously spreading the joy of reading and helping people in 3rd world countries have access to literature. I hope he gets shut down.

I’m all for making sure people have easy access to books. As a writer, it’s in my best interest to increase the reader culture, not do things that prevent it from growing. But at the same time, I want the people who are doing the work – the writing, editing, proofing, promotion, distribution, etc. – to be fairly compensated for that work. I don’t want some lazy, unethical jerk to ride on their backs and make an easy buck (or euro).

I’ve included a link to the website so you can decide for yourself. But count me among those who are angry and have their hackles up.

http://www.truly-free.org/

This is a quote I need to tape to the side of my monitor, memorize, and/or paint on my wall.  We writers should not forget this. 

“All considerations of language, of ideas, of symbols and metaphors serve only one function: to convey the soul of a living being to the soul of other living beings and in that process break us out of our isolation and loneliness and put us in touch with the universal spirit.”

~ Floyd Salas

Sometimes I dream of being an artist in the time of patronage.  Having some rich, and artistically savvy, someone pluck me from obscurity and take care of all the bills, keeping me fed, housed, and entertained while I create.  Honestly, I’d be relatively cheap.  I figure one of the Hiltons could support me in a very comfortable lifestyle for a full year on what Paris spends in one week of her tabloid-tastic lifestyle.  But the era of patronage is long gone, and there were problems with it anyway. 

When there is someone else paying all the bills there is a certain amount of kow-towing that goes with it.  If you don’t want to be out on your ear you have to please your patron.  You might get lucky and get an intelligent, well-educated patron with enough sense to let a good artist have his/her head, but you also might get stuck with a pig-headed idiot who thinks you exist only to aggrandize him/her.  In this way the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class was an incredible boon to artists everywhere.  It allowed for artists to not be dependent on a single patron.  The rising middle class now had leisure time and a few extra pennies in their pockets and so could afford and enjoy object d’art, literature, and music more than ever before.  The machines of the Industrial Revolution also allowed an ease of reproduction (particularly useful for things like books, magazines, and sheet music) that made it easy for some types of artistic endeavor to travel where it was not possible before.  Art was no longer the exclusive bailiwick of the rich and noble classes, and the artist was freed of the less savory aspects of patronage. 

But all the artist gained, really, was a new patron, the masses.  If you derive all of your support from one person, as long as that one person “gets” you your financial survival is assured.  But when you depend on smaller contributions from individual members of the masses a lot of people need to “get” you.  Some artists complain that this leads to a dumbing down of art in all its forms, especially since the consumer culture has grown to behemoth proportions in the last century.  The artist becomes trapped in the publicity machine.  You don’t want to destroy your art by pandering to the lowest common denominator, and yet there must be some amount of compromise if you are to fit as a proper cog in the publicity machine and thereby ensure you can buy groceries for the week and keep the lights on.  Some artists even divide their work into distinct boxes in their minds – there is “commercial” work that will keep the bills paid, and there is the “real” art, the stuff that truly follows a personal artistic vision but may not be appreciated by the masses.  One feeds the other.  And just when you think this fractured existence will go on forever, there is another revolution on the horizon. 

The internet has made it much easier for artists to reach audiences.  Where before you might be constrained to where you could travel yourself or where you could send examples of your artwork, now you are much less limited by the shackles of geography.  If you are the type of artist that has difficulty in satisfying the mainstream audience, you now have the chance to pick up your audience in small pockets, or even ones and twos throughout the globe.

So I ply my wares on the web (go to http://www.echelonpress.com/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=96!  Buy my stories now!) and hope to build up enough patrons to keep the bills paid.