Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society The Price Ain't Right

It's a story that raises a bitter laugh from writers who in the past 10 years have seen their incomes undermined by a toxic combination of cuts to fees and a steady rise in offers of work whose only reward - assure optimistic organisers and editors - is "exposure". As thriller writer Boris Starling notes bitterly: "People die of exposure. It doesn't pay the mortgage."

Despite this widespread resentment, professional writers continue to concede to requests to work unpaid because ‘there is no money in the budget to pay writers'. "In an ideal world no author would do anything unpaid, because we're all professionals, but we all do it," admits author Jane Johnson, who is also a publishing director at HarperCollins. Johnson sums up a similar dilemma for those with a book to promote: "If you are not a really established writer, you end up doing events for free sometimes because you won't be getting publicity support from your publisher throughout the year."