March 3 - World Writers Day: How to write books and not die of hunger

Novye Izvestia asked the authors and publishers how fast the success is and how heavy the writer's bread is.

Yelena Ivanova, Natalia Seibil

Creative professions have always attracted people. In the golden age of Russian literature, the classics were already making very good money on creativity. For a fee from War and Peace, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy bought 4,000 hectares of land, Anna Karenina gave the count a house in Moscow, an oak grove in Ryazan province, and a host of other useful things, including two sable stoles, a droshky and a chaise without springs.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin could spend his fee for the full edition of "Eugene Onegin" on an annual rent of a house on the Arbat and pay for the education of two children in a boarding house. It is said about Count Tolstoy that he was very strict in money matters and received his fee always before publication and in full, which is understandable - Tolstoy was the most read and highest paid writer of his time.

Much has changed in the modern world. Irina Balakhonova, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Samokat publishing house, says that writers' fees today are made up of advance payments and royalties if the book is reprinted. Sometimes the publisher gives the writer an advance so that he can work and write a new book. An advance from the advance is paid only to those whom the publisher already knows, with whom there are already projects, and it is already clear that the book will be interesting and not costly. The amount of the fee can be very different - from several thousand rubles to millions, but it depends on the circulation:

- If the circulation is small, the publishing house is small, and the author is unknown, this is, for example, his first or even the third book, but still, the circulation is three thousand copies, then it is necessary that the author's fee does not exceed 10%. With this 10% you have to pay taxes, so it costs the publisher at least 14%. And if you pay the author more, then, accordingly, more than 14%. If a picture book is published, then the artist needs to pay something. Then the authors will receive not 10%, but 6% and 4%, or 4 and 6%, depending on who drew or wrote more.

Writer Sergey Alikhanov says that he has published several books over the past 10 years in collaboration with major publishers:

"For example, I have published a two-volume edition in the publishing house AST - this is a very serious publishing house. Two volumes of prose. The first volume - the novel "Gon", the second volume - stories and stories. I got a thousand dollars for everything about everything. Then it was 30 thousand rubles, 15 thousand rubles each. That was the end of it. Lottery are not provided. I had a volume published by Terra. The novel Olenka, Zhivik and Ace was published there. I got 10,800 rubles for it. The work on the novel took about 10 years..."

It's almost impossible to live off a writer's fee, Alikhanov says, even as a published writer.

Each new novel by Alexey Makushinsky is shortlisted for the Big Book. The writer and the son of writers (Alexei's father, Anatoly Rybakov, the author of the famous novel Children of the Arbat, which came out only during perestroika, and his mother, Natalya Davydova, a writer who supported Solzhenitsyn at one time) lives on a university salary in Mainz, Germany. As he himself says, his writing is not about money, because in the modern world only suppliers of consumer goods make money:

"Publishing houses - not only in Russia - have realized that writers - well, or those who seek to write at least some serious books - first of all want these books to be published. So why pay them?

The fool-author will write anyway. And small publishers are also trying to take money from him for publication. If you have moved from the level at which you pay to the level where you are paid - at least a penny - this is already a great success".

Dilyara Tasbulatova is a film critic, blogger and writer who has published five books of satirical stories. Recently in Cambridge at a seminar on contemporary Russian literature, her prose was analyzed as representative, that is, reflecting the state of mind of modern Russia.

Dilyara says: for a circulation of at least 10-20 thousand copies, promotion is needed, for example, advertising in the metro, which costs money. This is what our enthusiastic liberal ladies did for Prilepin - promoted him, and the circulation of his books became huge. Not like Brezhnev's, of course, but still. The "Abode", however, was not entirely sold - only part of the circulation was sold.

Dilyara began her writing career at the Eksmo publishing house. Recommended by a writer Anna Berseneva. Lucky: Olga Aminova, a very professional editor, worked with her. Together they published four books, the circulation of which was completely sold out. The earnings were small, but they were always paid honestly.

Dilyara is one of those who took their fate into their own hands. She is convinced that her books were bought because future readers learned about her from the social network Facebook. In addition, Tasbulatova buys her books from the Zebra E publishing house, with which she is cooperating now, and sells them on her own. But not only new marketing techniques are important here, but also the style of her prose. The fact is that Dilyara works in the satire genre. Someone, perhaps, is many times more intellectual and talented than her, she says herself, but people love to laugh.

"If the author publishes his books himself, this is the most direct and steep way", - believes Irina Balakhonova. But whether it suits all writers is a big question. The publisher is sure that in the vast majority of cases, a writer and a publisher can only become rich together.

If you take the cost of a book, subtract from it half that bookstores take, overhead costs: rent, accounting, sales department, because the publisher distributes books, sells them - then it turns out that the profit that the publisher receives is equal to the author's fee - the same 15%:

"The publisher can also kick himself in the chest and say: I also want a profit of 80%, and let my book cost 1200 rubles. And he will tell the author: I will give you 15%, and I will leave 80% for myself. And what will the author say? He will say: are you crazy? I will not go to you, because you are depriving our book of the opportunity to be sold. And the author, for his part, cannot do the same, because together we are obliged to fit into the market".

And yet, writers think that getting rich off books is extremely difficult in Russia. Despite the gigantic circulation of Dontsova, Akunin or Weller, there are a lot of loopholes in order not to pay the fee, says Sergey Alikhanov:

"They get stable sums for novels. But this is a terrible, hard labor. For two or three years you have been writing and you are only in a novel..."

Or in a play. The famous writer Lyudmila Petrushevskaya described in detail her collaboration with the Moscow Art Theater, where a performance based on her play "He is in Argentina" was successfully staged for several years in a row. Only at the second artistic director Lyudmila Stefanovna realized that she had to receive a fee from each performance:

"And the years passed. How about multiplying the number of performances per year by the number of spectators? What if I demand?"

And in the fifth year, the amount was probably already hefty.

And the decision was made even under the wise Tabakov: enough is enough. And they explained to Zhenovach, apparently, so he finished the performance.

For 10 years Petrushevskaya's "Moscow Choir" was staged at the famous theater. After the premiere, she signed an agreement with the theater, but the fee was not paid - as it turned out, she signed the permission of the Ministry of Culture for the production.

"I have a pension of 20 thousand rubles (they should have paid me for the title of laureate of the State Prize, but the tax authorities decided that it was not necessary)", - writes Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. - And I pay 7 thousand for an apartment. Every year they add. It's good that February is a short month, pensioners joke. For a year I have published one book, plays. One. The Golden Mask Award is free.

Poetess Olga Zhuravleva says that writing can become rich if it is someone's project, including a political one. For the rest, success is all just a moment:

"Today you came out, you are successful, you are rich. You are so remembered. All. Then you can eat some pasta, wear unwashed socks, sit in dust and forgetfulness. And I know such a lot of our writers - old people. And only those who are at the trough - graphomaniacs - take budget money and do whatever they want with it".

An author can get rich if he puts his books on stream, but for a real writer this is difficult to do. Money will come if they start filming serials based on your books - TV pays well, even for hack, but it is mostly hack, notes Dilyara Tasbulatova:

"There is such a phenomenon as Akunin: but this is an honest project, on which, apparently, both he and the publishing house, which bought out the rights from him at once, to the then existing and all future novels, became rich. If I'm not mistaken. And it was published culturally. I can't reveal other people's secrets, but Pelevin's earnings are not very large compared to their American counterparts. As in America, you will not earn, even if you are anyone".

In Russia, the author, if he does not earn his daily bread in some other field, is completely dependent on his fees. In many countries, a large proportion of writers' earnings come from scholarships, which they receive from private and public foundations, fees for lectures and speaking in front of a variety of audiences. Russian schools also invite children's and youth writers to perform in front of children, but few pay for it. Irina Balakhonova says that this is nonsense, because such meetings are the most important tool for promoting reading in the country:

- If we found funds for writers to talk to children, and creative disciplines were taught differently, then we would have very cool readers, and much more interesting literature in general. In general, there would be a different attitude. Let the support of writers directly, let the purchase of books from publishers for, for example, libraries. Simple good things. It is just necessary that we do not cut budgets, and the selection of these books did not take place on the basis of personal acquaintance and loyalty, but on the basis of the quality of what was written.

The best time for writers was Soviet, says Sergey Alikhanov. Even for reprinted poems, royalties were paid, albeit cut, and if a complete collection of works was published, they were paid at full rate. Circulations were in the hundreds of thousands, and the state did not skimp on the creative elite - they paid not only in money, but also in vouchers, apartments and summer cottages:

"For the book "The White Snows Are Falling" Yevtushenko received 8 rubles for a line, since it was a one-volume book. It was very serious money. I worked as a translator for 20 years. I was paid 1 rub. 20 kopecks per line. And it fed".

It was one reality. And another reality is when books have not been published for decades, like "The Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov, "Life and Fate" by Grossman or "Children of the Arbat" by Anatoly Rybakov, the father of Alexei Makushinsky. Or when poets like Brodsky were sent into exile.

Alexey Makushinsky says:

"You should always remember that Mandelstam died of hunger in the camp. Next to this - everything is nonsense..."