I have been a dreamer, writer and teller of stories for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been bashing away for the last fifteen years to achieve my adult ambition of being a professional writer/storyteller – ie, one who gets paid, and whose stories get published where readers can find them.

Three years ago, with a heap of fun and learning under my belt, and having gained some good and supportive friends in the small press industry, I was very happy with my situation.  My earnings for those twelve years – it didn’t take me too long to add it up - totalled £504.96, one box of 30 remaindered books, a shelf of free contributors’ copies of poetry magazines and literary journals, and some toe-tingling reviews.  Yay!  I had achieved a reputation!

I went out to test my reputation.  Of all the booksellers in my town, I found two who were willing to buy my latest – the first took one copy and never reported back, the second took four, sold them, and paid my publisher nearly a year later, after several reminders.  A secondhand book dealer took four in exchange for some sci-fi paperbacks, provided he could sell mine as signed copies, and Ottakars took four, sale or return, and put them upstairs in their store-room when they didn’t sell in the first few weeks.  Thank goodness for everyman’s Internet - that’s where small press publishers make their sales.

The main problem, apparently, is that a few big publishers, who control the rights to just about everything that’s considered mainstream, have a stranglehold on the book shops, and dictate what goes on display where.  To them, a book that doesn’t have an international marketing drive behind it is a waste of shelf-space.

Okay, fair enough.  The contracts and copyrights they defend are there to protect authors’ incomes, aren’t they?  Well, I’m not so sure.  A couple of incidents from my career to illustrate my point: 

I once got a reject slip for an article I submitted to a major UK women’s magazine, which then printed a  piece remarkably similar to mine – by one of their in-house writers.  What could I do, small-fry with no lawyer on hand?  Nothing!

I once wrote to an author who was doing very well indeed selling Wiccan stories and how-to books for young people.  I wanted a young girl in one of my stories to be seen using the incantations this woman was apparently bestowing on the world for its own good.  No reply.  I tried her ‘contact me’ page, her agent, her publisher.  No response.  No go.  Better to ignore me than be seen saying, “Get off!  It’s mine and mine alone!!”

Whom do copyrights protect?  Consider this:  My daughter is a member of a very good amateur dramatics group (really – even allowing for starry-eyed motherdom, they’re good).  Working and learning together, they produce quite respectable presentations of ancient Broadway musicals two or three times a year.    Everyone thinks the group love ancient Broadway musicals.  Well, they do like them, but the reason we never see the young folks’ take on current West End shows is that if they were to produce one of those, they would have to pay thousands of pounds compensation to the likes of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, who apparently wouldn’t be able to make ends meet if they were forced to compete with an am-dram production at the Hastings Pavilion.

I had my first lesson in copyright law during my time at college.  I was digging up material for an essay on metaphysical poets, and began reading some works by one Andrew Marvel.  Suddenly, I found myself reading lines that I’d heard the day before in a lecture on John Donne.  I was amazed.  I rushed off to find out which author had been published first – who was the criminal?  I wanted to know.

The librarian patted my earnest head, and explained that Donne and Marvel inhabited a world completely free of copyright laws.  In their day, writers and dramatists got their wages from patrons who wished to contribute to (or be seen to contribute to) their country and their culture.  If a writer’s work was produced, reproduced, adapted and copied, their patrons took it as a sign of popularity, and upped their wages.  Thus the great artists of the time passed ideas to and fro, and developed what we think of as our classics.  Ask not whether Bacon or Marlowe wrote Shakespeare – I’ll wager they were in it together!

Wouldn’t it be better if we could do the same now?  Consider, for example, how deeply Bob Dylan’s words have entered our collective psyche.  His career is assured, and his words known and loved by a generation, but woe betide anyone who thinks they have reason to use the master’s words in public!  Okay, so authors need an income.  Of course they do!  But couldn’t we work out a modern equivalent of the old patronage?  Wouldn’t it be great if our government automatically paid a bursary to the artists whose work people were buying and using?  The size of bursary could increase the more the work was used, to acknowledge its active part in developing our culture.

© Copyright Kay Green 2006..