Literary business | You need a book contract like you need a hole in your head

A ship called the Literaturbetrieb: Everyone knows everyone here, and the sails only flutter a little. Photo: imago/Gerhard Leber Germany's authors cannot make a living from writing. Let that sink in. Every few months the big sigh makes the rounds. The authors are starving; they enter the literature factory at six in the morning, always hoping to get an order from the department head for the next 500-page novel! In the evening they rush back home with the U8; Once again they have given everything to their business, the literary business, and yet, as always, the account runs out in mid-April.

The authors then submit entries to the literary company - but the literary company's entry point is called the feuilleton: You always know someone you met at a book fair party; He then interviews you and you can pour out your sensitive heart. “The literary world is exploitative, it makes people sick and depressed,” says author Slata Roschal in an interview with SZ. Wacker demands higher advances, more (even more!) work scholarships and support programs. She says: "There are economic factors that determine who is allowed to write." The "SZ" nods seriously to all this and titles its next Roshal discussion: "How exploitation works in the literary world."

Or the author Bettina Wilpert. She once spoke to “Taz”. The “Taz” had a heartbreaking headline: “Bettina Wilpert can no longer live from writing alone.” Now the poor person has to go to work. She complains: »You are very economically dependent. If you don't sell enough, big publishers will drop you." And she's right, unfortunately: a calling is not the same as a job. Many millions of people dream of being able to make a living doing what they love. Very few are granted it.

With all other hobbies, people immediately understand that not everyone can expect to make a living from it. Anyone who likes to play football usually ends up in the district league, enjoys it and goes to work during the week. The origami butterflies and the ship builders and the patchwork blanket patchers maintain traditional cultural techniques, they enrich our diversity, they are happy when they can sell something every now and then - and they go to work during the week.

Authors have somehow received a special status with their actions. An aura surrounds them. In reality, the aura is just a PR strategy: Aura sells. Authors are pumped up to become great minds, voices of their generation, foreboding warnings, whatever. This is how they are made interesting. What they have to say is usually the same stuff that already appears in the feature pages.

Did someone say “exploitation” again? Oh dear.

The publishers don’t care about the individual fate. They have to maintain their infrastructure, they have to pay their publishing employees, every month. You have to play the game of the literary world, always new sensations, always new topics; have to serve debates that are currently in vogue and hope to attract attention. The truth is: Hardly any book recoups its cost; a few bestsellers usually have to save the publisher's balance sheet. It's also true: Hardly any author has more than two or three really important books, and the tendency is zero.

Isn't that a job at all? Not even the union really understands it, or doesn't want to understand it. She cannot understand that freelance literary writing is a fundamentally different activity to employed wage work on the assembly line, in the catering industry or in the authorities. But Verdi likes to join in the trumpet of exploitation and then throw out a few tidbits on social media, such as: “Authors should be fairly paid – they should demand at least €500 plus expenses per reading from the organizer.” (They can! You can always ask for anything. Where is the little bookseller next door supposed to get the money from? Doesn’t matter.)

The union also collects data and sadly announces: “5.7 percent of writers can live exclusively on the income they earn from writing.” And further: “Anyone who wants to make a living from writing will be disappointed. Many authors are forced to take advantage of other earning opportunities in addition to their freelance artistic work, such as paid employment. 

Then you reach the point where you really have to laugh. Unions express their pity for people who are “forced” to take a job? 5.7 percent of those who are defined as “writers” make a living from writing? In other words: The first step is to rhetorically act as if this were a job: being a writer. The second step is to complain that it's not a job. Because no one can make a living from it. (Fun fact: The 5.7 percent of lucky people mainly include game and screenplay authors - i.e. the people who fill us with the worst text garbage on behalf of television stations.)

"Exploitation"? Oh dear. In this case, only those who allow themselves to be exploited are exploited. Nobody is forced to hand themselves over to publishers and agencies and Bachmann Prize juries, nobody has to hang their salvation on a trashy fee, nobody has to get on the potty in this circus and act like a man: there is no existential need for it. Precisely because it's not a job.

The market economy is merciless, and it takes its toll on the authors. They are the weakest link in the book production chain, and the question is why you should do that. The question is why Bettina Wilpert equates “writing” with “being published by respected publishers and being paid well for it.”

The literary world doesn't work like that. It is not a supply institution. He seeks his sensations; This always requires new faces, new voices or people who are already known from television or the Internet, no matter what. It doesn’t matter whether they can write or have something to say. The result is the predominantly arbitrary, discouraged, uninspired yawning literature that we experience, and which obediently pants to where the feature knights are already waiting for them. As a cultural person, I would like to ask: Would literature be better if the ideas of the sighing authors were implemented?

Suppose the state creates a few thousand positions for authors. For life. Glorious. Worry-free. Maybe a few more state publishers. Who should then decide which author is worth supporting and who is not? Can anyone who likes writing identify as an author and then bring in the money? Or, German solution: Are only authors with thorough training at one of the notorious literary institutes eligible for funding? Do you qualify to be an author if you have sold a certain number of book copies? What makes business literature even duller than it already is? Do you introduce a points system depending on the social relevance of what is written? Should a central awarding body be created in which the usual jury members will sit?

However they would solve it, ultimately everything would be the same as always: whoever goes to the right parties, winks at the right lights and laughs in the right places will get the dough in the end. It's all human. Everyone is granted money and a life without economic fear. But does this make literature more surprising? More exciting? Suitor? Does it give us some food for thought - no?

I thought about it for a moment. Which German-language new releases of the last few years have surprised and delighted me. Three came to mind spontaneously. The names don't matter. I don't know much about the socio-economic background of one author, but based on his charisma I would guess: hedonistic heir. I know from the other author that his partner earns very well and safely, which gives him the happy opportunity to devote himself to the children and his great writing. Thirdly, I think of an author who, out of inner motivation, an inner laughing despair of the world, posted some strange fragments on Facebook.

All three were then lucky enough to be published by small to tiny publishers; no major publisher would probably have ever been interested in them. And, let's move on from the publishing fair: teachers, journalists, pensioners, IT typists, etc. have published some very nice novels and novellas themselves in recent years. It works. Pretty easy these days. It is not economic factors that determine who is “allowed to write.” It is authors who decide whether they care about literature. Or whether they only like to write if a lot of money and maximum attention are included in the package.

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