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The Economical status of the Writers
the Norwegian situation

Bente Christensen

After a short summary of a recent Norwegian report on the economical status of the artists, I will concentrate on the writers’ situation. I will present some thoughts about the actual trends in the remuneration system, and the solutions we have chosen in Norway to assure a decent living for the writers and decent conditions for our literature.

In 1996 a study of the economic situation of the Norwegian artists was published by the Institute of Social Research, financed by the Ministry of Culture, organized in cooperation with the artists’ associations. The data came mainly from a survey scheme, sent in by about 3000 of the associations’ members, about 50 % of the total stipulated number of professional and active artists in Norway in 1994.. The definition of «artist» was «members (aged - 70) of artists’ professional organizations, actively engaged, part-time or full-time, in artistic work». All sorts of artistic occupation was included: musical artists, visual artists and writers, but I will, as I said, concentrate upon the writers’ situation. The number of active artists has increased in Norway in the last years, and was 30-40% higher in 1994 than in 1980. One can say that men and women are equally represented among the artists, with a slight majority of men. Women are predominant as dancers and handicraft artists, but relatively few of them are writers - only 35. The proportion of female artists is however increasing. Most of the artists - almost 70% - live in the Oslo area, naturally enough, because the milieu and the jobs are there.

As to the translators, my group, the proportion of men and women is about 50/50, and almost 80% live in the Oslo area.

The average working time of the artists is about the same as the standard full-time work, even if there are large variations, and more than 25% of the artists have very long working hours. Most of the artists’ working time (two thirds) is with artistic work, while the rest is spent on art-related work (teaching etc.) and other jobs. Very few of the artists are salaried, 8 out of 10 are freelance. And they do not earn much money on their artistic work, compared to the average salary in Norway - about half the average salary of an industrial worker. Some very, very few - like success writers and some well-known actors - earn much money, but on the whole, to be an artist in Norway is not very lucrative. Even when one counts the total income - income from artistic work, art-related work and other jobs - the average income of the artists is less than the average salary of an industrial worker. As many as 46% of the freelance artists belong to what we call a low income group, about the level of a female shop worker. And the women earn of cause less than the men, in average 40% less total income than the men.

Almost 30% of the low income group received some kind of public welfare benefit during 1993 - unemployment benefit, social assistance, pensions, etc. About one fifth of the artists received some sort of grants in 1993, and the average sum was about one third of the average salary in Norway. Most of the grants are financed by the government - I will come back to this later

There has been an earlier survey - in 1979 - and the trend is not very positive. The income hierarchy among the artists has been largely maintained, and the income from the artistic work plays a less important role in the total income - 60 % in 1979, 51 % in 1993. And the artists loose ground compared to other occupations in Norway. The average income in the society at large has increased faster than the average income among artists.

However, if we want to be compared to other working people in the society, we also have to be realistic about our own contributions, and what is due to us. We have to consider the relation between education and relevant work, and between markets and «needs». Income is very often a question of market demand - whether we like it or not. Many professions in society protect themselves, by limiting the number of licenced professionals. Also when it comes to artists, we should ask ourselves if it really is a human right to live as an artist, i.e. to earn one’s life as an artist. In some of the artists groups there there are too many - they cannot be absorbed by the market. I think we must be realistic about this - we are living in a society ruled by the market, and have to deal with it. As an example, I can mention that the literary translators in Norway never work without a commission; we sign a contract with a publishing house before we start to work - we never do a translation first and then look for a publishing house. This is due to our relatively few publishing houses, four or five really big ones, and their manner of working. The editors select the books to translate, and hand-pick a translator for each title. About 220 literary books are translated each year in Norway, and when I tell you that our association has 270 members - admitted upon rather strict criteria - you will understand that very few people can live as literary translators in Norway, about 25-30 persons. So we cannot really encourage young people to choose this as a profession, we rather have to warn them..

We have to be realistic; even if we think that art and culture are the most important things in the world, others - very often the people sitting on the money - dont, and we have to reckon with this when we are trying to improve the economical situation for ourselves and our fellow professionals.

But even if I say that we must be realistic about the world we are living in, I do not want us to sit there and look at what is going on. We have our ideas and our ideals, and we must try to fight for them. So what can we do? First of all we can build organisations, we can stick together and be much stronger - and everybody will be better off. I know that this seems a bit Pollyanna-like, but I am very serious about this, because I see signs that make me rather concerned. My twenty year old daughter gave me an ashtray designed by the French artist Ben - with the words «Chacun sa vie, chacun ses poches»(«Everybody his own life, everybody his own pockets»). It took me nearly half a year - and many cigarettes - to really understand the meaning of these words - and I dont like it. I think it is a typical trend today to want to get what is yours, and not bother very much about the others, and the writers are no exception. We know that copyright is a keyword in the remuneration of writers, and it is of course very important to stress our legal rights. The copyright law ensures economical remuneration and ideal protection. We do not want to be presented in contexts that are harmful to our good reputation, and we dont want people to muddle with our works, to change them as they want. I know that this is a theme for another session in this conference, but I just want to mention that the new electronic medias represent a great challenge for the writers when it comes to copyright protection. The copyright is an individual right, but taking care of this right is a common task. I will remind you of what Sartre wrote as a comment to a cartoon with two donkeys that were tied together in front of two heaps of hay. Each ties to reach one heap, but they dont succeed, because they drag in opposite directions. But then they understand that they can do it otherwise: they first go together to one of the heaps and eat it, and then to the other. The message is clear: together we can do what we cannot do alone. This is a crucial insight for us. We have to work together in order to get our daily bread. When we put together our legal rights, our knowlegde and our energy, we can build strong organisations. And when we have strong organisations, we are able to negotiate more effeciently with both the private and the official sector. In Norway we have the system of the so called «extended collective rights» whereby rightsholders’ associations negotiate and collect fees on behalf of all rightsholders, not just the members of the associations. The writers’ associations have for example negotiated norm contracts with the publishers, with the book clubs, with the theatres and with the radio and television. In this way each writer and translator gets decent honoraries and royalties, and if there are any problems with the contracts, the association is there to help.

The above mentioned contracts give individual remuneration, but in the photocopying field, we have collective remuneration. In Norway, as in many other countries, it is illegal to photocopy copyright-protected works without paying a small charge for the privilege, a few pennies per copy. The users are aware that by photocopying for example pages from a book, they are depriving both the writer and the publisher of income they would have earned if the user had bought the book. And because the fee is so modest, most large scale users, as schools, universities, national and local government agencies, the State Church etc. actually pay it. The secret of all these small amounts is that they add up to quite a bundle - more than USD 18 million in 1994. The photocopying collecting system is administrated by our national reproduction rights society, KOPINOR, an umbrella organisation made up of 21 copyright-holders’ associations, including publishers, authors, translators, illustrators, journalists, photographers, composers etc. KOPINOR negotiates and signs the agreements with the users, and it collects the revenues and distributes them among the organisations. Then the money is funneled through to the people who actually earned them in the first place - the copyrightholders themselves, as travel grants, project grants etc. The system also gives the organisations the financial means to stand up and fight for the rights of all copyrightholders. An example: Four years ago, the two book translators’ organisations cut back a bit on the travel grants, filled a joint «war chest» and went on strike, selectively refusing the book translation terms offered by publishers after a collapse in contract negotioations between the publishers’ and translators’ associations. Certain translators were selected from among those who were in the process of delivering manuscripts to their publishers. They were asked to withhold the manuscripts. In return, they received full compensation from the war chest. As a group, the translators were amazingly loyal to the cause, and it did not take long at all to get the publishers back to the negotiating table. The selected translators then turned in their manuscrpits, received payment from the publishers and reimbursed the war chest. The «happy ending» was that the standard rate for translation was increased by 20 %.

Our relation to the state is equally based upon the cooperation of the writers’ associations. In a small market like Norway, 4 million people, art and culture cannot repose on the market alone, or if it does, it will be a rather stereotyped art and culture. What sells most is not always the best. The different governments after World War II have understood this, and have established a whole programme of grants and other subsidies in the artistic field. We have guaranteed income grants, travel grants, senior grants, establishing grants etc. , who go to the individual artists. And we have the important public lending right system (PLR), like many other countries throughout the world. In Norway this system is based upon the number of copies in the public libraries, and a small fee for every copy is paid into a special fund. The Norwegian government agreed to this form of compensation during the years of economic growth in the 1980s, and so far we have managed to protect it. The money in the fund is distributed to the different organisations according to a key that has been negotiated between the organisations, and is used in the same way as the photocopying money. It is important to underline that this system is a means of cultural politics - this remuneration is meant to stimulate the literary field in Norway.

Another very important system is the public buying scheme: as Norwegian literature had a very difficult time in the first decades after World War II, it was decided that the State would purchase 1000 copies of every Norwegian fiction book that was published, and distribute it to the public libraries. This was an excellent idea, because everybody earns on it: the writers get more royalties, the publishers sell more books, and the readers have access to the whole range of Norwegian literature. In the last few years, we have got public buying schemes for other sorts of books, among them translated fiction, a selective buying scheme, of about 50 titles bought in 500 copies, where the translators of the chosen texts get 25% of the standard fee in a sort of bonus.

As you see, we have a system that makes it possible for at least some of us to make a decent living out of our literary work, but it is a precarious balance between the different parts of the system. Actually the Norwegian writers are very concerned about what is going on in the book world. The net book agreement between tha publishers and booksellers wich guarantees a fixed price for all books and makes it incumbent upon booksellers to stock or procure a wide selection of titles, was terminated by the publishers earlier this year, and the negotiations seem very difficult. If we get a deregulation of the book market in Norway, we can risk a deregulation of the whole system, so we are talking with the two parties and ask them to find a solution that will give the writers and the literature a fair chance to survive in the years to come.

Bente Christensen

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