The Value of Art, Monetary and Otherwise
Hello, readers!
I’m perpetually slow to respond to the various Concerns about publishing that make the rounds on social media. That, combined with my child starting summer vacation, delayed the newsletter I said I had percolating about the value of art. But now, here ‘tis!
For the past several months there have been discussions on various social media that boils down to Writing, What’s It Worth Anyway? and which can, of course, be extrapolated to Art, What’s It Worth, Anyway? with the implication being: not much.
I write not much because it continues to be difficult to convince people that art should be paid for. Misperceptions remain about whether creating art is actually work or whether it’s just people pursuing a hobby in their spare time. I’m not here to judge whether people should or should not call their time spent on writing or any other creative pursuit work/a job/a hobby.
I am here to say that, in my opinion, it ought to be paid for.
“How much,” though, is harder to parse out. I’ll say upfront that my own feelings are strongly influenced by my belief that all people deserve access to clean water, food, and housing; and that because the world we live in requires these things to be paid for, that all people deserve living wages, from fast food cashiers to, I don’t know, welders, to junior editors, to special ed teachers, to social workers, right on up to the people who are already paid way beyond living wages. I’m an elder millennial, and I’ve long since been disillusioned from the belief that trickle-down theory actually works or that getting a college degree and “working hard” guarantees one a job that earns enough to pay all living expenses plus the loans for said degree.
(Side note: I’m extremely fortunate that my parents were able to ensure I left college debt-free. I’m eternally grateful for that, because, spoiler, English degrees don’t result in the highest-paying jobs. I keenly remember how, when my first post-college job as an editorial assistant finally gave me a raise to $15.50/hr, that was when my meager savings stopped depleting month after month. There’s a reason millennials and zoomers live at home longer than previous generations; frankly I probably should have stayed longer myself.)
I’m in favor of a UBI. If we had that, then we could better afford to delve into philosophical discussions about how many dollars this art vs. that art is worth. Because after all, how do we quantify the years that people spend getting good at their art? Since I’m a writer, I’ll speak in those terms: How much expertise do my stories and novels have, now that I’ve been working on my craft in some form or another for nearly three decades?
Or, if people want to disallow the time I spent writing as a juvenile (which, honestly, fair enough), how about we instead cut out those years. Let's say we also cut my “hobby” years post-college when I wrote only for NaNoWriMo. That still leaves a full decade, since that’s around when I started attending workshops, getting plugged into a writer community, and making deliberate, concentrated attempts to improve my craft.
A story I write now, as 2023-me, is much better than what I wrote as 2013-me from a craft sense alone. But what about even squishier “value” criteria? How much is it worth if I’m told that my art touched someone? If a story of mine made them smile, or gave them hope, or helped them feel seen?
You can’t put a monetary value on feelings. And morally speaking, while I do want to be paid for my work, e.g., by an editor purchasing the rights to a story or a publisher (eventually, I hope!) purchasing the rights to a novel, it’s not like I could, or should, go around telling readers, “Oh, you say my story saved your life? Thank you for the compliment, but also that’s X add-on value; pay up please!”
It’s impossible to come up with a standard on the value of art's effects. A life-saver to one person is a snoozer to another.
But the effects are real, and they are important, and the people who make art deserve to have a roof over their heads and food and water in their bellies.
So unless we do get a UBI that makes it less crucial to ensure people are paid enough to survive, my answer to Art, What’s It Worth, Anyway? is always going to be: a living wage.
Nb: I’m not saying short story editors need to pay the equivalent of a month’s rent or mortgage. I understand they literally can’t. But top magazines in the 1950s paid around 0.03-0.05/word, which, adjusting for inflation, would’ve been worth 0.38-0.63/word today. Had fiction pay kept pace with inflation, a 2k story could’ve netted the writer $1,260—which, while it may not cover a month's rent in major cities (coughDenvercough), would at least be a solid chunk of it.
Today, with “pro” rates being considered as 0.08/word, at least in SFF circles, that same 2k story is “worth” $160.
Yeah. This is why people say eat the rich.
I don’t have a real ending to this newsletter, so here's a picture of a mushroom I took while on a walk in my neighborhood instead.
Till next time,
Amanda
P.S. Expect another newsletter in July about my first drabble publication! Newsletter guaranteed to be much shorter than this one, because how much can I possibly write about a 100-word story? Let's find out!