ASA survey reveals that a national organisation representing Australia’s authors and illustrators, has never been more necessary

2.10.19

In 2017 and 2018, 25% of our membership completed our survey. In 2019 this increased to 30%. A big thank you to everyone who took part as we really do value your feedback.

It is encouraging to see new services, not surveyed in previous years, bringing in high percentages of members. Our advice service remains the Number 1 reason people join the ASA, however, marginally higher than all other categories. Consistently across the past 3 years 60% of all members say they use and value the advice service.

Member satisfaction has also increased. In 2018 87.19% of respondents said we had met or exceeded expectations, which increased to 91.16% this year. There has also been a steady increase in recommendations over the past 3 years. In 2017 80% of members said they would recommend the ASA, in 2018 this rose to 82.93% and in 2019 this has risen again to 89.53%.

Members are finding it even harder to live solely by their creative practice, with an increase in members working part time on their creative practice, up 4.41 percentage points and members working full time as writers or illustrators dropping by 4.21 percentage points.

The number of books being published by members has decreased. Since 2017 members have told us that print formats of their books are down 10.25 percentage points. Also audio/radio and TV formats have decreased. Members producing Ebooks have remained similar numbers across 3 years.

We have almost a 10% increase in members who are aspiring writers/illustrators, while the number of members who have published in the last 3 years is down 7% when compared to 2017. 

For the first time we asked where a members’ publisher is based. 70% of members are published on-shore and the other 30% are published overseas or in Australia and overseas. We also have an increase in authors and illustrators paying for publication and moving away from the traditional publishing model.  

In 2017 we asked if members had paid towards publication, 16% responded that they had. In 2019 this has more than doubled to 33.8%

Sadly, advances are decreasing overall. In 2019 70% of members said they received an advance below $2,000, in 2017 the figure was only 28%. This means that low advances increased by 150% in 3 years. 20% of respondents in 2017 earned an advance worth $10,000+. In 2019, this dropped down to 9% of all respondents. These figures reveal just how important initiatives like our rates trackers are, so please do input to these where possible to help us advocate for better rates of pay for all authors and illustrators.

Our thanks once again for your participation and we look forward to bringing you further services based on your feedback.