I see another "it is impossible to make a living writing" post making the rounds so I just want to tell you again about something the Icelandic government does. They give writers salaries to write books.
Icelandic is such a small language, which makes for a very small book market ... 🧵
... so there is no way to make a living selling only books, even if you are the biggest and most popular author in all the country. And there is NO WAY to write books for children or poetry and make a living. So the government supports writers financially.
It is not a high salary, and it quite competitive, you have to apply and not everyone gets it, and usually you have to have "proven" yourself before, i.e. published 1-2 books.
BUT it is a steady income and that is so important to have. And most of us supplement it with freelance work.
And the salary is not just for writers. There is one for visual artists too, and the stage arts, and design and music. But writers get the most (probably because it is the oldest salary, and we consider ourselves a literary nation).
It is not a perfect system, and it actually gets criticised ...
... a lot for various things (should be more money, should be more salaries, should be more for older writers, should be more for emerging writers), and I agree with some of those points, but I think this system is one of the things that Iceland does right.
The minister of culture just proposed a new law around this system, giving out more salaries, ensuring funding for emerging artists and filmmakers too. I hope it gets passed.
But anyway. I am a full time writer who writes in a language spoken by 380.000 people. I write mostly YA (an even tinier market in a tiny market) and I have been paid by the government to do so for the last nine years. I have published 19 books. I would not have been able to without that support.
And yet somehow the Icelandic economy hasn’t collapsed… Imagine that….
I’m just glad someone has a more enlightened government that can better calculate ‘value’
i mean it did collapse. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. like i understand where you’re coming from here but it very much did collapse.
I’m glad the government supports writing—such a rich history of language and literature there. I’m learning Icelandic and bought a book by Ragnar Jónasson and Katrín Jakobsdóttir in Icelandic, then realized I should probably have started with a children’s book. I’m going to get one when I’m there.
that sounds like a lovely little system! ensures creatives aren't fretting too much to put food on the table - even if they can only afford the cheap stuff 😅
When I see those posts, I reply, "Lots of people make a living writing." What they MEAN to say is that nobody is paying them to write BOOKS. There are lots of types of writing and many jobs that involve writing. So if you want to make money writing, you can.
Rule #1 of good writing: clarity.
