Good evening. I'm a non-fiction writer and a magazine journalist. I've been a freelance writer for 25 years now and earn most of my money from copyright. Many people have mentioned figures about the decrease in revenues from copyrights since 2012. I just wanted to speak to you a bit about how concretely that plays out.
When I began as a magazine journalist, I sold first rights for my work, which means that people who bought the first rights were able to publish what I wrote by preserve of the copyright, which is my property. Some people own buildings. I own property. It's called copyright. What's happened since, let's say, the mid to late 1990s and early 2000s is called a rights grab in the magazine industry, which means that in effect, I'm forced to sell that copyright without any more money.
By the way, the starting amount that a freelance journalist earns per page now is the same as it was in the 1970s. There's a pressure on industry. There's no increase in revenues, and writers are forced to sell all of their copyright in one shot in these contracts that take everything, including moral rights, which means people can buy my work and do whatever they want with it. That's the situation for freelance writers right now.
I'm also a non-fiction book author. Of course, most of my revenue as a book author comes from book advances, which are just copyright royalties ahead of time. The situation in the book world means that if I google one of my books—and my books have been good enough sellers for me to earn a decent living—I find a quarter of the Google entries are illegal downloads. This is in an industry, again, where book advances are falling and there's less money to begin with.
Thank you.