Good evening, readers, writers and thinkers. If you are in the UK, you are probably indoors scowling at the weather and huddled over tea. If you are reading this anywhere else in the world, please reclaim your rainclouds. I’ve forgotten what a blue sky looks like. It makes perfect sense why Bram Stoker decided to shipwreck Dracula in Britain in his novel: there are more bats here than sunshine, even in spring.
This is your weekly snark note: a short one with a smidge of hope. As always, all of your comments will get a response.
19th-century gossip symbols
Emoji shortcuts are not new. Neither are anonymous ill-wishers. Before we had text-speak, we had spiteful flower language.
To cheer myself up, I’ve been researching May Day customs. Not just the sex, booze and Morris Dancers that everyone thinks about, but the more obscure ones that only get written about by bored 19th-century clergymen who are trying to be anthropologists. Some of them are bizarre (washing your face in May dew), some of them became popular (cheese rolling) and some died out altogether (slaughtering a lamb at a standing stone). One of the better ones was flower doorstepping.
It was also called May Birching.
The idea was a simple one. You would wake up, check your doorstep and see what sort of flower, fruit or herb had been left on there. A rose or rowan branch indicated affection. A thorn (no flower) showed you were not popular. A pear indicated popularity whilst gorse flowers said you were slovenly and a nut that you were a slut (east to crack open). It was an anonymous commentary on your behaviour, or more charitably, a way for people to start a courtship without losing face. In some cases, it was also used to inform a wife about her cheating husband, by leaving nettles at the door.
Of course, it could also be a way to stir up trouble (for example by switching tokens around) or creating confusion with an entire fruit basket. You can see that today, on most social platforms.
The practice died out in the last century but our love of symbols is still here, thanks to text speak.🙈 💐 🤞
The Fiction Author Rich List
I think everyone who has ever daydreamed about writing a book has had this fantasy. It goes something like this:
After some work and struggle (let’s gloss over the number of edits), my innate genius will be recognised! I will find an agent, then a publisher and win the Booker Prize! Along the way, the movie studios will give me a million-pound royalty deal! I get to bask in the adoration of fans and go on talk shows.
Then reality kicks in - most of us are better off buying a lottery ticket than writing a novel. There are a thousand good reasons to write and you can build a thriving business from doing so, but these days it’s unlikely to be through traditional publishing.
The Author’s Society in the UK estimates that its members make less than £10,000 a year, with 47% of all earnings going to the top 1% of authors. Self-published authors fare better - around the £11,000 mark as a median and over half of them said they earned more than £16,000.1 In contrast to print publications, the top 20% of independent authors made six figures off their work with double-digit book portfolios.
But who is the 1% on the Rich List? Luckily for us, the Scotsman did the research. 2 There is a striking similarity with all of the top authors- I wonder if you can spot it?
J K Rowling. A billion-pound fortune off the Harry Potter franchise. She has continued to write adult crime fiction with the Cormoran Strike books.
James Patterson - Around the 800 million mark. More impressively, he’s written 200 novels across four different genres. If this was a running contest, Patterson’s the one who would do the ultra-marathon across the Gobi desert.
Danielle Steel - 600 million (but who is counting?) Out of the top three, she has sold the most books and comes close to Patterson-level productivity with 190 novels from her pen.
Paolo Coelho - 500 million. Almost everyone has heard of The Alchemist (it was on the New York Times bestseller list for seven years), but he wrote 16 other books, which have been translated into 80 different languages. It’s worth noting he fulfils a less-popular niche, pursuing spirituality instead of romance or crime.
Stephen King - also 500 million. He has published one book (sometimes two) a year since 1974. Along with JK Rowling, he is one of the most prolific book-to-film authors on the list.
So, what do they have in common?3
They don’t write for a living.
Stephen King could’ve retired his pen decades ago as one of the biggest horror names in the world. J K Rowling already had a successful career when she started the Strike series (which she did under a pseudonym). Danielle Steel is famous for writing five manuscripts at once whilst Patterson is on a personal crusade against the blank page. With more money in the bank than they can spend, getting rich is no longer their dream or even a concern. The same applies to fame.
I suspect it comes down the fact that they like it. Writing nourishes them - enough that they willing sit down for hours each day to do it. It’s not a whim or inspiration; it’s a daily habit.
I’m in awe of that. They’ve written for decades, through family demands, poverty, addiction, illness, bad luck and stress. Their riches didn’t come from the money they made, but the fact that writing nourished them.
I’ve been pondering Cornwall’s menhirs and stone circles this spring. Nobody is sure what they are for and if time travel is ever invented, it’s on the list of questions to ask. This poem sums it up:
The Standing Stone
by Mark Snell
Alone you stand beside the road
In a field or on a hill
Waiting for the end of time
Ever silent ever still.
A memory of an age long gone
Your purpose lost to modern men
Your maker’s gone but not forgotten
Through you we will remember them.
What memories are kept within?
What great secrets stowed away?
If we could only learn again
The knowledge lost to us today.
***
Until next week,
Nat
It’s slightly depressing that everyone is white and English-speaking - there are rich Indian or African writers but they are lower down the list. Zhang Jiajia in China, for example, earns over £3 million on his stories which he churns out at an incredible rate.
Wait, there are actual ancient stones in the shape of a circle not arranged like a circle? (*looks at her manuscript*) time to pull out the thesaurus
It sounds like the worst kind of hell, when you put it like that, Sam