Authors' Incomes Collapse to 'Abject' Levels

Will Self's lament for the death of the novel earlier this summer has been cast into stark relief by "shocking" new statistics which show that the number of authors able to make a living from their writing has plummeted dramatically over the last eight years, and that the average professional author is now making well below the salary required to achieve the minimum acceptable living standard in the UK.

According to a survey of almost 2,500 working writers - the first comprehensive study of author earnings in the UK since 2005