A room of your own

The Royal Literature Society has just published a report (yesterday, to be precise) called A Room of My Own. In it, they discuss what kind of support a writer needs. I haven’t yet had a chance to read it, but the following findings strike me as interesting:

• 80% of writers need a room of their own (me too, plus various cafés dotted around London).

• Only a small minority of writers are able to support themselves through their writing income alone. A writer is almost three times as likely to earn over £30,000 from work outside writing than in it.

• 10% of writers do not have jobs or any other form of financial support beyond their writing.

• 52% have freelance, temporary or part-time paid employment; 20% are in full-time paid employment.

• 5% of writers earn over £30,000 from writing; 14% earn the same outside writing.

Those findings echo the parlous state of writers’ earnings in the UK (and elsewhere).

To read the report, go here: A Room of My Own (pdf)

The EU Copyright Directive

I wrote about this in a recent issue of my education newsletter, Digital Education. The UK’s Society of Authors have produced a guide to it in plain English. It’s very readable, and very welcome!

Here’s the link to the article that contains the report:

The EU Copyright Directive Explained