Interview: Jannat Ahmet on publishing in Wales

Jannat Ahmed, one of the founders of publisher Lucent Dreaming, talks with Jon Gower about their decision not to apply for funding and the myriad challenges facing publishers and writers in Wales.

Jannat, you have described a crisis in the arts in Wales. What has precipitated that?

There is a health crisis in the arts right now as a result of long-term standstill funding, cuts and precarity, especially affecting writers and publishers. When I share my experience of depression, what I hear back from writers, artists, and publishers in Wales is people are so stressed they are experiencing weight loss and hair loss, not being able to afford bills, food, housing, and other ill health that they can’t afford to manage or address, being overworked; this is either caused or magnified by precarity and inadequate pay over time. And we collectively accept the narrative that, because it’s been this way for so long, it can be no other way. I don’t believe that’s true. The first step is everyone in the arts and culture industries acknowledging our financial reality is unacceptable.

Ultimately when things get so dire and you can’t see a way out, it becomes more life and death. For me it led to suicidal ideation, just the pressure of having to deliver in this context. I mean obviously I had other personal things going on at the same time but it was only upon having accepted the receipt of funding that was inadequate and foreseeing how things couldn’t get any better over time really – because I didn’t have the resources to invest more time in things that could yield more – and so just suppressing that with inadequate resources inevitably means that you do chip away at what’s possible. 

You can’t think about growth when you’re thinking about survival.  And unfortunately, one of the things that I’m hearing now is that the situation is that way. When you move through life, you make decisions about the kinds of fulfilment you wish to chase.  the thing about finances is, like some people could choose to chase money, but the thing is we all need it.  We all need it to be able to function in our daily lives. So even though I’m chasing creative fulfilment and hopefully producing literature and art that people relate to and connect with and foster a sense of self -confidence and self -belief over time, that work isn’t valued in the system, in the funding model that we have now.  And it’s only those who are able to supplement their finances that are able to think about staying in this industry, I think.  

The Society of Authors reported a drop in the average income for a writer in the UK from a median income of £12,330 in 2006 to £7,000 a year, to a third of that, in 2022. In Wales do writers actually earn less than that?  

I think so, yes. From the publishing side, what I observe is a maximum £1,000 in a year from book sales. And I can’t imagine that individual authors from their writing alone are getting commissions or other work that would reach £7,000 in a year.  

An author I spoke to recently, who has been in publishing since the 1980s in Wales, has seen the changes over time. He suggested that the biggest subsidiser of publishing in Wales is the writers themselves. And I think I agree. If advances back then were £200, and advances now are £500 … what does that mean for writing culture? Moreover, those publishing in Wales don’t expect to sell more than 1000 copies of their books, even 700 is ambitious, so even earning out an advance of £500 (let’s say it takes selling 500 copies) means that in total, the only other royalties a writer can expect is between £200 and £500 over the course of the lifetime of the book. A writer receiving £700 in total for a book they spent hundreds of hours working is not sustainable, especially for those from lower-income backgrounds.

I am a strong proponent for Universal Basic Income, but let’s say even if that takes time to implement, how can we ensure publishers are subsidised to adequately cover author fees, and their own work. A year’s fair, living wage for a year’s work: £34,000. If that sounds crazy, impossible, unrealistic, it’s because we have been taught to be grateful for less and less and less, even though it’s making us unhealthy. How might society in Wales change if a Welsh writer knew a book contract in Wales would give them a year’s wage, that they could then invest in housing, in their community, in their next book? I know exactly what strikes fear into government officials and funders in suggesting this figure: the fear of us demanding more, and better. Because they would have to step up their game. That’s the radical shift in thinking I want for us. Think big, and think fair.

The Society of Authors report also described a labour force which is suffering poor pay and working conditions based on a reliance that creators will always be incentivized by their love of creating. The report said that women, black and mixed -race authors, along with younger and older authors, all earn less than their respective counterparts… 

Yes, so those who are most marginalised experience the most suffering, and that’s unacceptable.  I don’t think it makes sense that the Books Council for example, but this is the primary example actually, fund so irresponsibly. I feel like it’s an irresponsible funding model because it doesn’t permit anyone outside the centre to succeed and what I mean by that is there’s an understanding in Wales that although English language writers could publish outside of Wales and that there are support systems outside of Wales that can support writers in Wales they are not focused on Welsh writing and Welsh writers and the specific needs that we have in the kind of devolved system of power that we experience.  So we’re not going to see English language publishers value Welsh stories written in English.  We’re not going to see them value investing in Welsh writers writing about whatever they choose to write about. 

And so we know that funding is required to subsidise this whole portion of culture-making that can only happen within Wales.  And it happens best, I believe, in Wales, for Wales, through publishers who are well-funded, as well as writers who are well-funded.  And so it’s a two -prong thing with Literature Wales and Books Council Wales and their approach to funding that doesn’t advocate enough for the fact that to produce good commercial writing over time. I think we’re very capable of producing good commercial writing that could be world-class, but it requires lots of time and resources to invest in lots of people writing, writing lots of different kinds of things and us all influencing each other and seeing ourselves reflected, and that becomes a development process in and of itself. But because we can’t even get so far as completing a project, for a writer, completing a project, when do they have time and resources to do that? And even if they do have time and resources, it doesn’t mean when they get to the next stage, which is sending it out to agents, etc. 

Having writing communities who will support and give good critical feedback to develop that writing, they also are on that same level, really. And so that’s not going to increase their writing skills.  It’s not going to develop their skills over time. There are no resources to create these environments where people push to improve and express themselves honestly, because I think there’s also a lot of baggage that comes with the idea of, okay, I need to think about commercialization when I’m writing things.  

Romantasy

One of the leading commercial genres right now is romantasy, which combines fantasy and romance.  I’ve seen an article about people in Wales being pretty miffed that American writers are borrowing Welsh culture and bastardised Welsh names and packaging it in this genre. And my question is, why are Welsh writers not writing this?  And if they are, why are they not being picked up?  And I think it’s because a diversity of voices is not encouraged here.  Because what I feel is the publishing system in Wales is based on people who have gone through academia, and I’m one of them, having another job to be able to supplement their writing and publishing work, they’re concerned with the literary.

Now, I think I’m grateful that I have created a publishing press that isn’t just focused on the academic voice. I’m focused on what people see most passionate about, their personal projects that I can see value in sharing more widely. That’s my mission.  But that’s not something that everyone can share or afford to share because they’re thinking about literary value like if they know that there’s no commercial value to what they’re publishing then they want to have the literary value they want to go after the awards and punch above their weight that way.  And so I assume that writers who are writing more commercial fiction are going outside of Wales to publish.  And actually that editorial and publishing system is diluting the richness of what that same book could be was it nurtured in Wales, by Welsh editors, by Welsh publishing, by a Welsh film and TV industry, by a Welsh video game industry. 

You know that it’s a whole system that we can foster, but it requires ultimately strong investment over time in literacy, in literature, in oracy, all of these skills that are found in the book industry.  

In Ireland, they have a tradition of small presses cultivating a writer to the point when they are marketable, and then they go and actually represent that writer to a bigger publisher, asking will you take this person on, sometimes in partnership.  That sort of thing doesn’t seem to happen in Wales…  

No, there isn’t a sense of long-term thinking or long-term strategy in what I’ve seen in funding in Wales.  because again the idea is survival and the idea is survival because successive governments have opted for standstill funding or funding cuts. That is no place for the funders themselves, in fact, to think long -term strategically about how to grow the publishing industry in Wales, to grow the writing industry in Wales.  Instead, it creates a culture where, well, actually, yeah, it creates a culture of fear. It creates a culture of scarcity, and in that vein, it makes people want to prove their value. 

There’s nothing more disempowering, I think, and I speak as a Welsh woman of colour, than having to prove your own worth to others who ultimately don’t value you. And I think it’s the most painful, actually, when that’s coming from the Senedd, from Senedd members, from successive governments, who we have put in place to look out for our wellbeing, to create these structures in which we are not in a state of fear, not in a state of survival. 

You decided not to go for funding as a publisher because you didn’t actually think that that would give you and the other staff at Lucent Dreaming a living wage, let alone a decent wage.  But you haven’t actually packed it in, though.  You’ve decided to carry on, without funding. It would have been easier, given the tribulations you’ve had to do something else.  So is that because of your allegiance to your writers? Or is it allegiance to the idea that if you actually had the big vision and actually helped to realise it, things would be much better?

It’s both allegiance to our writers and long-term vision. So because I started Lucent Dreaming with the intention to help change things in the publishing industry, and that’s a value I’ve always come back to, and it was the publishing industry worldwide that I was actually interested in when we set up as a magazine, I’ve always been forward -thinking in that way. 

One of the things that I’ve observed over the years in terms of independent publishing is you survive longer if you survive longer, essentially. And that’s how I operate. I think that the longer we exist, the longer we will exist.  But it doesn’t have to be restricted to what we already see in the world. I have a problem. With commercial publishers, in fact. I have a problem with the fast fashion model that I think that they’ve lent into. 

It’s obviously commercial, it’s obviously capitalist, and it leads to all sorts of interesting issues that I will touch on another time. In this case though, it’s not thinking about longevity and it’s not thinking about culture as a whole. It’s not thinking about creating a sense of identity. It’s not thinking about how people empower themselves through reading and writing. It’s scratching an itch, I suppose, and I don’t necessarily want literature to just be that.  

You see writing as being nourishing and health-making and have suggested that were we able to measure cortisol levels they would be higher after reading and writing. It keeps a lot of people sane, this writing business…  

It absolutely does. And books themselves. So obviously, I’m looking at it from a publishing and writing angle. 

From a publishing angle, I think it’s so important that good books exist because they spark conversation.  And conversation is community, and that’s so important to our survival and to thriving.  And even in ourselves, when we pick up a book and it asks us questions, we’re having a conversation with this voice from the past.  In terms of writing, on the other side, it is health making, because it’s expressive and that space for self -expression allows us to heal, to interrogate, to share even. 

I think language, words, is the closest we have to mind reading. It’s our ability to take this thing out of our head and and share it with someone else, and hopefully they have similar enough reference points that it makes sense. You write something and then when you come back to it, you can add more.And that builds up layers of thought.  And one of the other things I love about writing and literature is that the only reason we’ve progressed so much as a species is our ability to write and record things. Because imagine every generation having to relearn Pythagoras or relearn to make a recipe or how to build a road or fix a bike. And that ability to write instructively is also important, but it’s also a way to obviously share ideas and feelings and we haven’t really changed over time. 

So let’s ask ourselves should there be a publishing industry at all in Wales? Should there be a writing culture at all in Wales? The answer must be yes, because how can we possibly suggest no. And so the question follows, can either of these exist without subsidy? In other words, can everything developed for the publishing industry in Wales be commercially viable? Is all writing from Wales commercially viable? Unfortunately not. And it is on this basis we should be shifting our attitudes regarding funding models.

More stories written and published and marketed well would mean more become more commercially viable over time, but equally, let’s address the reality of our existential situation today, so that we can afford to be visionary tomorrow. Today, how can we better fund writers who (in terms of hours spent on the craft, unpaid) subsidise our industry? And how can we better fund publishers and fuel their marketing resources to encourage a more vibrant industry overall, to bring a larger variety of books to audiences, so that readers in Wales and beyond relate to our stories, build connection, invest emotionally and financially in our communities, with understanding and care?

Like any craft or skill, the more we do as a nation, and as individuals, the better we get. The more likely we will produce world class literature, consistently, increasing our chances of commercial success. But it takes secure long-term investment prioritising the cultural life of Wales through government spend, through funding. We are currently stuck thinking about immediate survival. There is nowhere near enough investment in the publishing industry to grow. We know the pipeline from book to film and tv and video game industries exists. Yet, we ignore investing in the intellectual property that published work represents, so that we can integrate Welsh stories with these funded Welsh film and TV sectors. There will be more and better to select from if the business-minded among policy-makers think of the writing and publishing as a long-term research and skills development project for a nation.