10/14/2023 0 Comments Penny for your thoughts book![]() ![]() Over the past five years, every writer I know has been told by their agent to ‘monetise the activity around their writing’. No, I cursed myself, and all the other damn fool authors like me who work for free. If authors are happy to receive cheap wine instead of money, then fair play to Hay. They do what any business should do: keep their costs down. What with the expenses hassle and the bottles of plonk in my boot, I felt increasingly ripped off as I watched the petrol-gauge needle – my car is that old – swing to the left as I drove down the M4.īut I didn’t curse Hay. I know what you’re thinking – it was promotional activity for your brilliant new book! You can’t expect to get paid! Perhaps, but then the book had been published some five months before and the royalties on sixty books hardly make the largest of dents in that dread ‘unearned income’ column. So 48 quid all in, and I bet Hay paid a lot less for it than that. I googled the wine to see what it cost and found it for as little as £8 per bottle. Hay had probably made around £1,400 from me and I had got, er, six bottles of wine. Compared to Hay’s turnover of £4 million and gross profit of £1 million, that’s not a huge sum, but it is certainly greater than a homeopathic ratio. Those eight hundred people had each paid £7, earning Hay a tidy £5,600. A form? She didn’t think so.Īs I drove home, I did some maths. I asked if there was a form, anything like that. Somebody said a few words, and the woman came back and told me that I should email somebody else. Somebody looked up to see who this nobody was. Expenses? Mileage? She needed to ask somebody. What was Hay’s mileage rate? I can’t recall if the woman’s eyes bulged or narrowed, but they certainly expressed astonishment. I approached the Artists’ Reception desk to ask about expenses, explaining that my round trip was 250 miles. ![]() Afterwards, I signed about sixty books and then Tiggerishly bounced into the Green Room, where I was given six bottles of wine. ![]() However, after a few minutes and a few laughs, I managed to relax, and the talk seemed to go pretty darn well. I was a little nervous, as I am accustomed to speaking to gatherings of about a tenth of that size. Eight hundred people had gathered in the Barclays MegaCash Pavilion at the Hay Festival to hear me talk about my latest book. ![]()
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