Oh, what it is to be young and idealistic and stupid!

When I begun my forays into the world of authorship I imagined that one day I may be able to get something published the old-fashioned way. The problem is the old-fashioned way doesn’t exist any more. The competition to get into the ‘midlist’ where you may earn enough money to feel bitter about the fortunes of Dan Brown is completely insane. The chances of becoming a best seller are about the same, if not a little worse, than those of winning any given lottery. 90 people in the US make a living out of writing. That’s not enough to fill most busses. You could buy them all a christmas gift for under 500 GBP.

Basically, that way’s so tortuous it’s probably not worth bothering. And unless someone from that world comes forth to offer me a clear career path in the industry that doesn’t involve rolling lucky on a literary agent’s aesthet-o-meter I will have to pass or die. Thanks.

So then I think I could make some cash out of self-publishing. However, I really have no time and no money to properly market this stuff and my chief aim is to make it available to the 50 people who want to buy a copy, or whatever. If I ever make serious cash on this business that’s the time to start worrying.

Then I think. Well if it’s a labour of love and I’m only really paying for my site and web hosting (ISBNs now being a luxury I can’t afford and a place on the Amazon market a dubious gift at best) then why not give the rest of my profit (ha! profit!) away to worthy causes?

Well, there is no reason.

Except, as has become painfully apparent in the last few years, I seem to have a tattoo that reads “mug” on my forehead and despite my best efforts I have been taken for several rides which have landed me, er, somewhat in debt.

Basically, at this time, if there’s money about, I need it. Really, really badly. I’m not going to be able to continue my crusade if I’m actually bankrupt now, am I?

No.

So. Until such a time as I am reasonably debt free I have to take my own royalties. I may dig myself out of this hole and I will keep you informed of the evolving situation but for now. I need the money. I *am* a fricking charity case. Sad to say.

However. With that important caveat in mind here is my pledge.

On the day that I am no longer in serious debt, whenever that day may be, all of my profit will be given away because when I have no debt I will have no need for profit from my art. I do not want a country estate, or a Porsche, or a swimming pool. I just want what I have now and to be free from having to owe people money because other people ripped me off.

I promise I will keep people appraised of my progress in my aims through this site and on the day that all is sorted out I will nominate my charities and run totalisers of this year’s running totals.

Payments to these nominated charities will be made once a year, in April at the start of the new financial year. They wil be made from my personal current account because I keep being told that the era of free banking is over and I really can’t be doing with sending my passport to bureaucrats who want to check I’m not a Colombian drug baron laundering money.

This is my pledge for now and in perpetuity.

Leo Stableford, 25th November 2006

Update, July 2nd 2008:

I’ve been blogging in blissful ignorance of my visitor stats for years now. I once put some free measuring tool on the domain pre-wordpress but at that time I hadn’t actually even done the relatively little I’ve achieved in the past couple of years. Anyway, someone at work showed me Google Analytics and I ummed and I ahhed and I procrastinated and then I started a project on which I would like to do some analytics (more on which shortly). So after I’d started messing about with the widget on that site I finally got around to adding the tracker to this domain and well… now I am addicted to Analytics.

It’s got graphs. It’s got stats. It’s got a groovy little map which shows you where your traffic comes from. And it’s got breakdowns. In looking at the latter I discovered that some of the people who’ve been paying me a visit (Hello! Hello! Oh, and, hello!) were taking a look at my “Pledge” page. I hadn’t really looked at the text of that page in a while so I thought I’d join them.

I kinda understand now why people employ lawyers. I mean, jeez.

Although the spirit of the pledge remains intact I think that in strict logical sense it leaves a lot to be desired. The statement:

On the day that I am no longer in serious debt, whenever that day may be, all of my profit will be given away because when I have no debt I will have no need for profit from my art. I do not want a country estate, or a Porsche, or a swimming pool. I just want what I have now and to be free from having to owe people money because other people ripped me off.

for example seems to be quite self explanatory. But then you get to the questions. First of all, once I’m out of debt how do I stay out of debt? Or, more precisely, I promise to give away my profits, but what are my profits? Should I become a world famous author how much am I to set my salary at? Do I get incremental pay rises every year subject to me reviewing myself favourably? Or do I have a set stipend and access to further funds if I apply to myself?

The whole thing implies that I will only determine what my “profits” are every year in April. However should I have enough money from this income to earn a wage then in April I assumedly won’t yet have my tax bill. How much can I donate to charity tax free? Also, I’m notoriously picky when it comes to charity donation. Unless I was happy a charity was providing tangible benefit without significant wastage I probably wouldn’t be happy donating to them. If I set up my own charity would that count?

It’s pretty clear that I am referring to the profits of my writing but what about partnerships? Am I counting scripts for projects? Am I counting RPG development? Technical works? Or is it just the novels? I do a lot of different types of writing, the product isn’t always the thing that is written.

A fit of righteous fervour seems to have been counterbalanced by a moment of logical lunacy. I am not even sure what I meant by the words I wrote in the pledge at the time, not more than the vague philanthropic notion that it represents anyway. Perhaps it is a life lesson that since I typed that page 19 months ago my financial position has, if anything worsened, not grown better. I still have no royalties from my books (I haven’t sold enough to make it worthwhile Lulu issuing a royalties cheque). Of course this is pretty much as I expected. If I was to tell you my pledge wasn’t made with these results in mind then I’d be lying. It was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek declaration of the philanthropy I would indulge in if circumstances allowed.

Still, just because my intentions were badly expressed does not make them genuine. I think they just need more definition. Essentially, were it ever an issue, I would take a wage out of my royalties because that’s sensible. Anything surplus to what I require to meet my next goals is profit. I can tell you now what I would like out of life. A business, a wage, a stable, strong family. Anything that is not purposed to acquire those things is profit I don’t need.

As for charity donation. Well I figure as long as the money is transparently being put to some charitable use then who cares how the money gets from me to the worthy cause in question?

I realise that this may seem a bit rich coming from the man with a thousand projects, no money, no time and no real public profile. I reason that however tongue-in-cheek you may make your proclamations when you have very little if you don’t entertain the idea that one day you may have means in any way seriously that’s just one more count against your success and really any reduction in counts against you is needed. I can count the number of people who believe I might have some larger creative worth on the fingers of one hand and I only get to the fourth because I count myself in that number.

So the analytics tool has put me in the position of re-examining my life agenda even as it reflects my low reader numbers. So I’d say a worthwhile end to the business.